


I'm Not Here Looking For Absolution

by cerie



Series: Altars [1]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, First Time, Out of the Blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-03
Updated: 2011-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-25 16:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magnus/Druitt (past; implied), Abby/Will (unrequited), Magnus/Will, Henry/Kate.  AU for Out of the Blue where Will and Abby are FBI agents and Magnus is in protective custody to testify against John Druitt in a massive drug case but things aren't always what they seem.</p><p>Special, special thanks to my darlings Technosage, Callie, Windandthestars and Kageygirl, who handheld and listened to me pitch this ridiculous idea for months before I ever actually sat down and did it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Not Here Looking For Absolution

“So what’s wrong with this one that you want to trade?”

It was a little muffled and Will looked up, not surprised to see that Abby was talking her way around a plastic spoon. Food around their office tended to be portable and easily eaten in a couple bites considering they spent half their time driving here and there and Abby had mastered the yogurt cup diet. Blueberry, this time, and when she sucked the last of the yogurt off her spoon, Will caught a glimpse of purple stain around her teeth.

Will pushed the file toward her, letting it flip open. It was easy enough, which was why he wanted Abby to have it. She’d been saying her mom wanted to spend more time with her and considering all the windshield hours she’d been putting in on the Scarpelli RICO case, he thought watching one lonely artist would probably be a hell of a lot easier, especially given she lived right here in Seattle instead of God knows where.

“Just thought your mom might like some family bonding time. It’s open and shut. She’s supposed to testify in the Druitt case. Used to be married to the bastard.”

Abby made a little noise as she considered it, weighed the pros and cons. Babysitting Mrs. Druitt meant she’d be home for plenty of baby showers, wedding showers, blind dates and the aforementioned Mom-time which would make her personal life a lot easier than it had been. Granted, to hear Will tell it, she was a piece of work but she didn’t necessarily need the woman to like her, she just needed her to get to trial and back in one piece.

“You said she was difficult, right? I mean, haven’t you been on this one?”

Will shrugged slightly. His issues with the Druitt case were mostly because Helen Druitt, on paper, seemed like someone who’d drive him insane. A former surgeon, after marrying Senator Druitt she’d turned into the perfect politician’s wife. Gorgeous, controlled and the absolute master of her kingdom except the part where her husband was writing laws by day and running prostitution rings by night. A hit from Druitt was bloody and half the Bureau suspected he’d carried out some of the kills himself. Anyone they’d found to testify against him turned up in bloody ribbons a few days or weeks later and that’s why the wife (ex wife, now) had a list of demands a mile long when it came to her protective custody. Will couldn’t wait until they could hand her off to the US Marshals but until she testified, she belonged to them.

They butted heads because Will wasn’t the kind of guy that dealt well with rich, bossy women because he simply didn’t have experience with it. He liked observing and watching, sure, but he didn’t like being ordered around and Helen Druitt was…she wanted things just so. He’d only really talked to her over the phone thus far and he already was more than happy to hand her off to Abby and take over her mob case. Abby didn’t seem entirely convinced.

“There’s a reason they put you on this. I don’t want to get into trouble.” Abby tossed a glance back over her shoulder at the half-open office of the supervisory special agent they reported to, McDaniel, and then back to the file across the desk. Abby was nothing if not a rule-follower and if it didn’t make her stand out in a crowd, it did make her competent at her job and that was all Will could ask of her. He tended to go off the rails from time to time and needed her to ground him.

“All right,” Will said, conceding the point. “But the next time something easy comes up, I want you to take it, okay? The whole family thing is important to you.” Abby nodded and Will could have sworn he saw a blush go across her cheeks before fading away and he repressed the desire to sigh. He’d never had a problem working with Abby but he knew she had some kind of schoolgirl crush on him and he didn’t really help matters much when he did things that belied his inner knight in shining armor. Cute girl, sweet girl, but Abby Corrigan just wasn’t the kind of woman who did it for him. Somehow, even after years of living on the West coast, she still had a kind of Midwestern charm that Will was never going to have.

It all boiled down to the fact that Abby _had_ a family, a mom and a dad and a sister who was a preschool teacher down in Oregon and that she _wanted_ her own family: house, picket fence, two kids, perfect husband. She’d get it, someday, but it’d probably take her actually leaving the Bureau so she had time to date and actually cultivate relationships to get her on that path. Until then, she’d occasionally glance at Will with a wistful look and he’d dutifully ignore it because he had enough baggage to start his own mail-order luggage company.

He flashed her a grin and took back the Druitt file before motioning toward the clock. “Shoo. It’s six, go get out of here and surprise your mom and I’ll go see what I can do to make sure Dr. Tea and Crumpets is comfortable. We have got to get her out of that house but she refuses, so I guess we have to try to make it as secure as possible. I’ll be there most of the night, probably, trying to talk her into more security than she’ll let me have.”

Abby grinned, the cute one where her nose wrinkled, and she bopped his head playfully with another file. “Methinks the agent doth protest too much. She can’t be too bad. Is the great Will Zimmerman scared of a lonely, rich lady? It’s just like any other case, Will, promise. You’ll be just fine, rave reviews, best profiler ever, field agent of the year. I could go on and on if you like. I’ve got plenty.”

Will glared but it didn’t last very long before he grinned. “Say hi to your mom, okay? And thank her for the shortbread, it was great. I think it lasted a whole two days last time so she needs to double the batch the next time she sends me some.” Abby nodded and mock saluted, collecting her jacket and umbrella before heading out into the late autumn drizzle to go have lattes and talk designer cupcakes with her mother, or whatever it was Mrs. Corrigan was working on these days. Too much time on their hands.

It was an hour or so later before Will was ready to pack up, laptop and files brought with him so he could start his shift at Druitt’s. They had a couple unmarked sedans that screamed ‘Fed’ parked right out front and another pair about a block away. Will’s own Toyota stuck out just as much because this wasn’t a Toyota neighborhood: it was a Mercedes-Jaguar-Bentley neighborhood. He was expected, though, so he parked his slightly-used Camry next to a sleek, silver Jaguar XF that looked like it’d never been driven.

He hadn’t gotten the chance to get everything out of his car before he heard the door swing in and the soft mew of a cat being let out for the night. The voice that followed was crisp and British, clipped and cold and absolutely precise like the surgeon he knew her to be from her files. He managed not to hit his head on the car door as he made his way out, and his eyes took her in from soft, cocoa-brown boots up tight jeans and to a loose, off the shoulder sweater to her face.

Photos had done her a lot of justice, she was beautiful and photogenic, but everything he’d seen in the file had been the perfect politician’s wife: hair ironed flat, eyes and lips done in neutral, pleasing shades, crisp suits and perfect lines. The Helen Druitt in front of him had messy curls instead of glossy, pin-straight locks and her eyes were deep blue and smudged with dark liner and shadow. There were purple bruises beneath, she hadn’t been sleeping, and the tremble in her hand showed she’d been substituting caffeine for said sleep.

“I suppose you’re making yourself at home, then?” she asked, gesturing her hand toward his car as if it was something distasteful, maybe a rat that her cat had dragged up onto the step. Will shrugged and bought time by sliding off his glasses and cleaning them off where the light rain from earlier had smudged them. He didn’t ask for an invitation inside and she didn’t exactly invite him, but she did step just enough out of the way to let him slip past.

The house was cluttered and lived in: a small pile of dirty dishes in the sink, cups half-filled with water and paintbrushes along every available surface, books and magazines stacked in teetering piles on the cabinets. In an attempt to keep the house as secure as possible, the FBI had advised Druitt to dismiss her domestic staff but Will almost thought she might have done it well before the FBI warning. The living room was dominated by heavy, leather furniture and sleek modern tables but the art was all messy and chaotic and anything but clean.

It didn’t match the rest of the house but a quick glance to Helen Druitt’s hands made the pieces fall into place. They were stained blue and purple along her fingertips, bruise-colored to match the massive night sky portrait that dominated the far wall, and the house smelled faintly of turpentine, oil paint and rich, dark coffee.

“Did you do that yourself, then?” Druitt looked shocked by the question, gaze flicking from the painting back to Will’s face. Her eyebrows were high, delicate arches just like her cheekbones and the eyes that had arrested him when he first saw her glossy photographs in the dossier back at the field office were even more striking in person. Sapphire, when he’d first seen her and now darkened to a smoky, gray-blue.

“I’m really not sure how you could tell but yes,” Druitt said, uncrossing her arms. Will felt some of the tension bleed from the room with that simple gesture and he pressed his luck with a little grin. He nodded toward her hands, long and elegant and now that he knew, perfectly suited for a paintbrush when they’d once held a scalpel. There were flower arrangements everywhere in the house but they were artfully messy, like the rest of her, and he was reasonably sure she’d cut and arranged them herself instead of ordering them from a florist the way he originally thought.

“Your hands are stained blue and purple, presumably from the night landscape that you have hanging on the back wall over there. The house smells like oil paint and turpentine, but muted, so I think you usually paint with all your windows open. There’s paintbrushes in the kitchen, more of them than dirty dishes, so I think you’ve been painting more than eating lately.” He paused, taking in her reaction to the assessment. Helen Druitt may have uncrossed her arms but she was still on guard, cagey, and he wondered if that was her natural reaction to new people or if she was (understandably) on edge about her ex-husband.

“I suppose you earn your keep, then,” she said after a few long moments, motioning for him to sit down on the sofa. She took a chair just to the left of him, sitting right at the edge of the seat so she could bolt if she needed to, or so it appeared. Will leaned forward, insinuating himself into her personal space without being overly intrusive and gave her a little smile. Time to get down to business and likely the part she wouldn’t like very much. Helen Druitt was on edge and frightened and had developed a routine, haphazard though it might be, and didn’t particularly care for the introduction of new elements to said routine, especially when she couldn’t exert control over them.

“The best way to protect you from your ex-husband and anyone he might send after you is to move you, Dr. Druitt.” She wrinkled her nose and shook her head, curls shifting in disarray with the motion. She smoothed her palms down jean-clad legs and let out a shaky breath along with the motion, trying to ease tension. It was still palpable, though, and Will shook his head.

“I know, you don’t want to. We’ve been over it. The best way for me to protect you is for you to follow my rules.” She stiffened, then, all the vulnerability in her eyes clearing and hardening to steel. Natural reaction to being forced, to balk at it, and Will had prepared himself for it at least. He hadn’t been prepared for just how crisp and cold she could be.

“Absolutely not. This is my home and I won’t have you or anyone else coming in and telling me that I have to upend my entire life. I’m divorced, my husband’s been arrested and nobody’s heard from my daughter in weeks. I may, in fact, have a dead child and while there haven’t been attempts on my life yet, I’ve no doubt it’s on the way. I will not give up the one place I feel even remotely safe, stubborn and stupid though it may be. You will merely have to find a way to secure this home and I will do everything in my power to comply with your instructions.”

Will took off his glasses and wiped them clean again, just a little cheat to buy him more time before he had to address her concerns with concerns of his own. That done and moment stolen, he slid them back on and met her eyes with his. His voice was low, even and level because there was no sense in riling her when she was already clearly entirely too wound up about the situation.

“Fine, we do this my way. You will have surveillance cars parked outside your home at all times. Agents will be working in shifts and, at any given point, may come into your house to verify your security. Deliveries will be processed through your protective detail and you are not to travel anywhere without at least one agent with you. It seems…a little much, I know, but you’re the last person I have to explain to about just how dangerous your ex-husband is. Men, women, he’s not discriminate and anyone who gets in his way ends up dead sooner rather than later. Let me protect you, Dr. Druitt, until we can get to the trial and you can testify. That’ll make sure you’re safe, okay?”

Druitt looked like she wanted to consider it, chewing lightly on her bottom lip and it struck Will as such an insecure gesture, a young girl’s tell and not the ice queen who was sitting in front of him. He didn’t really know how to reconcile that with his mental profile of her and shoved it to the side for a moment along with his strange desire to tug her into a hug. Helen Druitt looked like she desperately needed affection.

Will softened his approach then, lightly touching a hand to her knee. She didn’t flinch, really, but her eyes still had that cagey, startled look to them as if she was afraid John Druitt would whirl in from the shadows and destroy her carefully-constructed artificial safety. He didn’t know much about their marriage, aside from the fact that she’d ceased practicing medicine after it happened and they had one child, a girl named Ashley, but he couldn’t help but wonder if Druitt was as forceful and domineering in his personal life as he’d been in his professional one.

“You _will_ be safe. Nobody is getting to you unless they go through my dead body and the dead bodies of the agents we have posted outside. Nobody. It’s harder to secure a house and a neighborhood like this, true, but if you really, truly want to stay here, I can’t force you to go. What I can do is monitor the situation and let you try and continue a normal life but the second something compromises the safety of this house, you will be moved. No arguments. No protests. I am not risking your life for nostalgia.”

That seemed to calm her slightly and she nodded once, barely perceptible. Will tamped down his desire to touch her hand and wondered if maybe Abby wouldn’t have been a better choice for this one; Abby had that sweet, wholesome thing going that might put her at ease. Of course, Abby’s folksy charm might just have the opposite effect and put her on edge because Helen Druitt was anything but folksy. Abby would probably compare the paintings to macaroni art done by her sister’s preschoolers.

“Coffee? I’ve kona from Hawaii.” Will nodded, noticing how she pronounced ‘Hawaii’ with a little of the native inflection and wondered if she’d spent any extensive time there or if she was the sort who picked up a little of the native culture no matter where she went. He followed her into the kitchen and leaned against the island as she measured out the beans, ground them in an electric grinder and spooned them into a filter which she trimmed with a little pair of scissors that seemed expressly kept for that purpose. It wouldn’t surprise him. The woman was apparently a coffee connoisseur.

As the pot brewed, they talked about this and that until the window pane beside Will shattered inexplicably. Druitt let out a shriek and ducked down between the island and the bank of cabinets on the far wall and Will flinched himself, unsure of why the window had simply shattered like that. His eyes scanned across the room, zeroing in on a bit of splintered wood about six inches from where Druitt’s head had been moments before: buried in the white oak cabinet was a bullet round.

Will took one of the white linen napkins laying across the island and tugged the round out, dropping it into a Ziploc bag. The chain of custody was going to be a nightmare but he could get a forensics team in later, after he got Druitt and her things evacuated. While he’d been willing to let her stay when he thought the premises were relatively secure, sniper rounds out of nowhere pretty much negated the idea of “safe.” For her part, Druitt seemed to be holding up well, her only real giveaway the tremble returning in her hands.

“Rather lucky, aren’t I?” She laughed lightly, hollow, and Will shook his head. While it would be nice to be able to give her platitudes and make her feel better, there weren’t really any platitudes to give. He touched her shoulder lightly, gave it a little squeeze, and Druitt looked shocked that he’d invaded her personal space. Nothing bad, nothing good, merely shocked, and Will left his hand there for a moment before pulling it away.

“No, it was a calculated hit, Dr. Druitt. They could have easily hit you, but didn’t, so they’re sending a message. They got past the perimeter we have up because they used a sniper. I can’t protect you unless we move you, because they’ve cased this place out. We have to extract you and we have to make sure we’re not tailed, which we can do, but I need you to pack as quickly as you can and do everything I say.”

***

Ten hours later, Will turned into the drive of a tiny cabin tucked well away in the mountains of Montana, Druitt in the seat beside him. If it’d been he and Abby, they’d have traded off driving, but Druitt was too blitzed on fear and Xanax to be trusted behind the wheel of a car. She’d packed quicker than he anticipated, mostly because she hadn’t argued when he’d made her leave the paintings behind, and she got out of the car quickly, stretching her long legs and arms. Will stretched too, but only for a moment, before getting their bags out of the car.

It was a small cabin, a bedroom and a living room, a kitchen, one bathroom. Druitt had two bags, both clutched in her hands, and Will only had one that he happened to have in the trunk of his car. They’d need more, if they needed to hide out for a while, but at least the safe house was stocked as far as food and essentials for the evening. He took the bags from her hands, frowning when he saw her fingers white-knuckled against the handles. Scared to death and running on adrenaline.

“Look, go sit down and I’ll get this stuff put away. Nobody’s going to find you here, Dr. Druitt, I promise.” She said something soft, a whisper that Will couldn’t quite make out and he asked her to repeat herself, busy hauling the bags back toward the bedroom. She’d stay in there and he could sleep on the couch, at least for the time being until they could find an air mattress or a cot for him to stay on in her room.

“Helen,” she repeated, just a little louder. “I’d like it if you would call me Helen instead of Dr. Druitt.” She had curled up on one corner of the couch, legs folded beneath her, and it didn’t take a profiler to know she was folding in on herself from fear. Will nodded and stowed the bags in the bedroom before coming back out, squeezing her shoulder lightly with one hand.

“Helen, then. I’ve got everything stowed back in the bedroom whenever you’re ready to go to bed. We’ll have to go into town eventually to pick up some things but I think we’re good for a few days if you want to just relax.” Easier said than done, considering this wasn’t a vacation, but he could try his best to make her more comfortable.

She nodded and stayed curled on the couch and after watching her for a few moments he settled next to her, pulling out the files of his other active cases and catching up on paperwork. Since she was still in protective custody until she could testify and Druitt’s lawyers kept stalling the proceedings, Will didn’t know when, exactly, he’d be able to get away from this case to handle anything else. Sucked, but it was part of the job and if anything, he was good at what he did.

It was an hour, hour and a half later when he looked over at her again and it looked like Druitt…Helen had actually fallen asleep with her face curled into the couch and her hair obscuring her eyes from view. She looked younger like that, less worried, and Will couldn’t help but smile a little. He tugged an afghan off the couch and tucked it around her before brushing her hair back out of her eyes. She didn’t rouse, miraculously, and Will settled back into work before getting a call some time later.

“Zimmerman,” he said lowly, trying not to wake Helen where she slept on the other end of the couch. She stirred a little but didn’t wake and he settled back into the conversation. It was Abby, chattering and Will guessed she must have been making the drive down to Oregon to see her sister. Abby always liked to have someone to talk to well, always, and long car trips with nobody else were the bane of her existence. It was cute, in a weird way, and Will was happy enough to indulge it for the time being.

“So, how’s spending the night with Creepy McPaintsalot going?” Abby asked and Will cringed and glanced over at Helen, who’d stretched out a little on the couch and pushed her feet against Will’s thigh. He tugged them up into his lap so she could stretch out the rest of the way and tried to focus on Abby’s voice instead of the soft, sweet sound Helen made when she settled into her new, more comfortable position.

“Helen and she’s fine. Scared to death, but who wouldn’t be? It’s not every day someone shoots at her in her kitchen and she was already a piece of work after having been married to Druitt and her daughter going missing. She needs some calm and if she gets it here, that’s good.” Abby made a little noise under her breath, almost a tsk of disapproval and Will stifled his own reaction to that. Okay, he shouldn’t be getting that close to a witness but being concerned for another person’s well-being wasn’t too far beyond the pale. Abby was just…reading into it.

“Better be careful, Will, getting too close to the job. I know you’re married to it but there’s a big difference in that and getting all warm and fuzzy about the Scottish lady.” Will wanted to correct her but that sort of proved Abby’s point a little and he decided a better tactic might just be to shift the topic of conversation to Abby and what was going on with her instead of on what Will may or may not have been thinking about his current assignment.

“You’re in the car, aren’t you? Where are you headed?” Dangerous, baiting Abby with an open ended question but that was better than the alternative. He closed his laptop and settled back on the couch to listen while Abby went on about stopping at some market and buying windchimes before heading down to her sister’s for the weekend. It was about a four hour drive, give or take, and Will had to wonder at what point in the drive Abby had called him. He might be occupied for a while if it had been right out of Seattle.

“Will? Are you listening?” Will jerked out of the haze he’d been in and tried to remember what Abby was saying. Fingerpaints? Walls? Something about her sister’s class in school, maybe, and he got distracted even more when Helen’s toes flexed in her sleep. Some kind of dream, maybe, and he shook his head to clear it before going back to Abby and what she was saying.

“Sorry, I got distracted. You were telling me about Rose’s class, right?” Abby made a little clicking noise but kept going, happily chattering about how Rose’s kids had painted a mural in class and someone had gotten paint on the class bunny and it had almost been a disaster. Will could hear the car slowing down, after a while, and he gathered that Abby had been further in his drive than he thought and was on the road to her sister’s house; good thing, because Helen had stirred.

“Who are you talking to?” Her voice was low and husky from sleep and Will covered the phone before speaking. Abby was still babbling and he wanted to focus on his witness for a moment. Will had a masters in psychology, even if he’d never practiced, and he knew that waking up in a strange place might be hard on someone who was already stressed.

“It’s my partner, Abby. You fell asleep. Want to get up and go to bed? I’ll wrap this up and come with, if you want.” Helen arched a brow at him and shook her head before getting up, wrapping the afghan around her shoulders as she padded into the kitchen. She rummaged through the cabinets for a moment before cursing and Will covered a laugh before going back to Abby.

“Abby, hey, I’ve gotta go. Call me if you need me?” Abby sounded only slightly annoyed, she’d already gotten to her sister’s, but Will knew he could probably smooth that over later with a phone call or a text. Now that Helen was awake, he wanted to work on his case a little and try to get some resolution so she _wasn’t_ having to hide out in Montana for the foreseeable future.

“I don’t need you to follow me like a shadow, Will.” Helen’s voice was laced with equal parts irritation and exhaustion and Will didn’t know if he should be annoyed back or not. She’d had a hard couple days, of course, but so had he, in a way. He didn’t like the idea of her being in danger any more than she might and it wasn’t just a job to him. His cases were his life.

“It’s my job to be on your tail so I’m going to…be on your tail,” Will said easily, shrugging. The joke fell flat, though, and Will fell quiet along with it. Helen found what she’d been looking for, a couple of old tea bags and a kettle, and it was nice to watch her fill it and place it on the stove. Rituals were comforting to anyone and getting to see one of hers was an unexpected intimacy.

“Need any sugar?” Will asked after a few moments and Helen nodded, so he crossed the room and got it, placing it on the counter between them. She looked half a breath from crying and Will sort of wanted to squeeze her shoulder and tell her it would be all right but he didn’t think the gesture would be welcome. She seemed like a private person and, besides, up until a few hours ago she hadn’t really liked him all that much.

The quiet moments continued into cups of tea standing in the kitchen and transitioned from there to the sofa once again but Helen was sitting up instead of lounging with her feet in his lap. It was nice, this, and it was definitely a change from Will’s norm. The norm was usually spending the night alone with work or maybe a baseball game and, if he was feeling particularly adventurous, going out for a drink with Abby.

Abby was a chatterbox and Helen…was anything but. She was reserved and Will imagined it was a function of both her fear (which was palpable and understandable, given the circumstances) and her own nature as an artist: introverted, anxious and well outside the petty concerns of every day. Her own house had been messy and cluttered, after all, and judging by the state of the kitchen after brewing tea, it wasn’t going to take long to tumble toward entropy.

“Ashley would have hated it here, you know,” Helen said and the words hung in the empty air for a moment. Will was unsure how to respond since it had been well over three weeks since Ashley Druitt had gone missing and they’d had no proof of life. Will wanted to think that John Druitt hadn’t had anything to do with it, she was his _daughter_ , but the man had powerful enemies as well as friends. Anything could have happened to her by this point.

“Really? Why’s that,” Will said, hoping he could draw it out from her naturally instead of seeming like he was fishing for information. It was a conversation, not an interrogation, and he sipped at his tea to help maintain the illusion. It seemed to have worked for the time being because a little smile graced Helen Druitt’s mouth before fading, a brief glimpse of sunlight before the drapes were drawn again and, at least this time, it looked like she hadn’t closed them as tight.

“Ashley loved the city. That’s why she wanted to move to Seattle, actually, and away from where we lived. She loved clubs and dancing and staying out all hours of the night and I ended up becoming a night owl because I couldn’t sleep when she was out like that. I couldn’t sleep until she called and told me she was safe at home, which was silly as she was a woman grown and off to university, but there you have it. I do some of my best work at night when I’m exhausted and fretful and I suppose I have my daughter’s wild streak to blame for it.”

That got a smirk from Will, trying to imagine a teenage hellion trying the graceful, elegant Helen Druitt’s nerves but it was more than possible; she had shown him a frayed, worn side of her and her anger was nothing to trifle with. Once she got to the end of her rope, it seemed, she could be dangerous. Luckily, she didn’t seem to be in too bad a mood at the moment and his smirk got another in return. There was just the barest hint of a dimple and Will had to tamp down the desire to coax her into a laugh, coax her into smiling wide enough to flash that dimple and really look happy.

“I don’t mind it, though, the quiet. I usually have too much going through my brain at any given point and being somewhere peaceful like this lets me filter my thoughts and tease out new ideas. I’ve had a bit of a dry spell lately, inspiration wise, and it’s sort of nice to have a forced vacation. “ She did smile then, wide, and the dimple was as gorgeous as Will had suspected it’d be. It was a good look on her, happy, and he hoped that after the trial was over she’d be able to go somewhere and recuperate and simply _be_ for a while.

“I wouldn’t know anything about art. I can’t even draw a stick figure.” It was true and Will had actually only passed art in college because the TA had been sexy and had the hots for him because there was no way he actually grasped the principles of drawing a form any more complex than a tic tac toe board. The type of painting Helen did was completely beyond him and he didn’t really even have the art history background to appreciate the techniques she employed and the themes she explored. It was pretty, to the untrained eye, and that was enough for him.

“I didn’t pick it up until after I left my practice,” Helen said and it was the kind of candid remark that made Will perk up and listen a little closer. It probably wasn’t anything that would be pertinent to the case, no, but he was interested in her, in the enigma of her, and every little thing she told him about herself was one more tile flipped over in the mosaic that was Helen Druitt. This was what he lived for, the puzzle, and while it was only a tangent to the case at hand, Will was all ears.

“John and I had a rough go of it, with both of us working all the time, and I thought I needed to quit my job in order to save my marriage. It was a dramatic shift even if our finances never changed and it was hard to spend those days home alone waiting on John to come home. Ashley had already gone to university by then, you see, so it really was just me and the cat. I started taking lessons, little things to pass the time, and it turned out I was fairly deft at painting. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, now,” she said, and her smile had started peeking back out again. Will smiled back.

“That’s brave, quitting what you know to venture into waters unknown. Not sure what I’d do if I wasn’t in the FBI. I used to have a fantasy of playing first base for the Blue Jays but I tore my knee out freshman year and there was no way, no matter how good my batting average was.” It hadn’t been a secure career choice, either, and that was a major concern for a kid on scholarship. His mom had done everything she could to make things good for him but it was hard on a shoestring budget and Will hated to ask her for anything, much less fuck up his only chance to make good money and take care of himself and, eventually, her.

“You might as well be speaking Greek, baseball talk. I never watch sports, even proper English ones like football.” Ashley liked them, though, just based on the photos Will had seen in the Druitt house before moving her out to the safe house; there were almost as many soccer trophies as dance ones.

“Soccer, you mean,” Will teased and the little nosewrinkle he got in return for that just incited him to want to do it again. It was borderline flirting and he should probably stop but since his league and Helen Druitt’s league were so far apart they weren’t even in shouting distance, Will didn’t think it was too valid a concern. Besides, witness, protective custody, taking emotional advantage: it wasn’t Will’s style, not by far.

“Soccer, then, if you insist,” and the last word was marred by a little yawn on Helen’s part. Will gave her a pointed look that spoke volumes about how he thought he needed her to rest and just go to bed and Helen shot one back that meant not a chance, I still have hours left in me. Will thought he was going to win the war, though, so he was more than willing to concede this one particular battle.

Helen drew a nail along the rim of her mug and looked up at him in a way that made it seem that, at least for a moment, a veil had been lifted and she was letting him in. Probably just a function of the forced proximity and his authority in the situation, sure, but it felt good and Will wanted to close his eyes and just soak up that feeling for a moment before coming back to reality.

“I’m quite sorry I’ve been so difficult. It’s in my nature to be stubborn, yes, but I need to try and keep in mind that if anyone is on my side, it’s you. I know it’s your job to protect me and to handle these things for me because I’m a valuable commodity to the US government at the moment but I still want to thank you for doing your job admirably and, at least tonight, making it feel like I might be safe for a little while. It’s not something I’ve had the luxury of in a very long time and I felt it needed to be said out loud.”

That floored him, actually, and the smile he gave her told every truth he’d been trying to bury since he’d first seen her and she’d stunned him with her looks. _It’s just because she’s scared, Zimmerman, don’t take advantage_ floated around in his head but he shoved it to the side for a moment just to enjoy her gratitude and the fact that she was, for the moment, about as safe as she could be. The adrenaline of the past day had pushed them much closer together and Will was pretty confident it would fade once things died down.

Still, he reached for her hand and squeezed it lightly before releasing it. “Hey, you’ve had it pretty rough the past few weeks. Nobody’s going to hold your temper against you, least of all me. Best thing to do right now is just get some sleep and in the morning, we can take inventory and see if we need to get anything to make our…accommodations a little more luxurious. If you’ve got any preferences, make a list and I’ll go into town and see what I can manage. Maybe even coffee so you can stop drinking brown-tinted water?”

The last got a sweet, if tired, laugh and Helen stood, placing her mug on the coffee table and stretching and arching her back to pop it. Will somehow managed not to stare when she did that and moved to get up himself, nodding back toward the bedroom. “You know I’m going to have to sleep back there with you, right? Someone could come in the window.”

Helen arched a brow, challenging, and Will didn’t back down. “Look, it’s not my choice. I would prefer we have two separate beds or, like we usually do, have a rollaway or a cot, but there’s not one. I’m going to get an air mattress tomorrow. But I need to be in that room to make sure you’re safe. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Helen, and in order to keep that promise to you and my higher ups, I need to be able to see you and get to you in a moment’s notice. If they come in through the window and I’m sleeping out here, that’s seconds I lose. Okay?”

Helen’s eyes were wide with fear and anxiety but she nodded, conceding. Will was relieved she had and they wouldn’t have to argue it and he hoped the actually in the same bed part would be resolved the next night and they could keep some distance. While the FBI wanted him close, he doubted they wanted him in the bed with his witness. In fact, Will was damn sure there rules that expressly forbade that exact thing.

For now, though, the hand at her elbow was friendly and supportive and the plaid pajama pants and old Blue Jays tee he planned to wear to bed were (he hoped) completely non-threatening and just another iteration of her assigned agent for protective custody, no more and no less. A horizontal version, sure, but Will had always been good at playing the non-threatening best friend. It was different from Abby like this because Abby needed him to flirt with her a little, build up her ego. Helen just seemed like she needed someone who cared.

And, in spite of his better judgment, Will was starting to care.

***

Will wasn’t used to sleeping with anyone in bed. It had been a few years since he and Meg broke up and most of the girls he’d seen since then hadn’t stayed over often or been serious enough to live with. It took getting used to, especially since Helen had put a thick pillow between them, but he managed. He hadn’t been asleep very long, though, when he woke up in a cold sweat from a nightmare (it had been a _long_ time since he’d had one of those too) and soft, warm hands brushing against his face.

“Helen?” Startled, yeah, and he blinked his eyes open to try and focus on her. The pillow was gone and Helen was right next to him, hands still touching his face and sliding up into his hair. It felt nice, what she was doing, and when she didn’t stop, Will just let his eyes drift back shut. She stopped after a while but he got the sense she was...hovering somehow and he cracked one eye open to look at her.

“Yeah? Helen?”

She looked a little sheepish and like she didn’t know what to do with her hands and Will took one and rested it on his chest to try and calm her down. It seemed to work, mostly, and when she spoke her words were calm and clear.

“I just wanted to do something to help. It always helped Ashley, when she had a bad dream. It wasn’t too presumptuous of me to assume, was it?” Will barely resisted the urge to laugh at that. Too presumptuous. He’d been extra cautious with her because she seemed to need personal space but he actually liked touching and hugging and being physically affectionate. He was alone most of the time in his personal life so when he did get to spend time with people, he liked to make the most of it. Helen touching his face and hair like that had been fantastic to wake up to, no lie.

“No, it’s fine. A little embarrassing that you had to catch me waking up like that but we’re fine. Some big bad FBI agent I am, right?” That got a laugh out of Helen, at least, and when she drifted back off to sleep she’d kept closer. It was something that Will didn’t want to get too used to, especially considering it was _not_ a good idea, but for right now with both of them shaken up? It was good.

He didn’t wake up again until sunlight started streaming through the windows and he rolled over to find the other side of the bed empty. Hmm. Helen wasn’t really a morning person, or he didn’t think she was anyway, so it felt kind of weird that she’d be up and awake before he was. Still, no need to panic right this second and Will decided to take a minute to stretch and find his glasses before padding out into the kitchen to start looking for her.

He didn’t have to look far, Helen was currently standing in front of the cupboards with a contemplative look on her face. He’d assumed she wasn’t much of a cook considering her house had been mostly paint and takeout but maybe the assumption had been wrong. Or maybe she was just trying to find something quick and easy and he was reading too much into it.

“Find anything enlightening?” His voice must have startled her because she dropped the mug she was holding and it shattered against the stainless steel of the sink. While she moved to start clearing it away, Will moved closer, touching her shoulder lightly in comfort before kneeling to help clear away the pieces that had fallen to the floor.

“Remind me never to sneak up on you again,” Will said, half under his breath, and tossed the broken pieces of china into the garbage before turning to look at her again. Something had spooked her this morning, maybe, or maybe she wasn’t as settled as he’d thought after their talk the night before. Either would be fine, of course, but the former implied something _else_ had happened and if someone was making threats against his witness, Will wanted to know about it sooner rather than later.

“Didn’t think you were a morning person, though. Couldn’t sleep?” Maybe that was subtle enough without showing his hand outright. Helen still looked tense and she pressed her lips together before nodding. Hmm. Okay, maybe there was something to it, then, and Will’s curiosity was piqued; if they’d been compromised, it was better to move her now rather than later.

“I heard scratching at the back door earlier this morning,” Helen explained, turning to look at him. “I thought maybe it was someone trying to get in, so I got out of bed...it was just a raccoon trying to forage in the trash. I ran it off but then I was too rattled to sleep. It was stupid, I guess, but I’ve been hyper alert since...since all of this happened. I’m not sure why John wants us dead. I should know, he’s a criminal, but I didn’t think he necessarily wanted to harm Ashley and myself.”

“You know a lot of things about what he’s done. Even if he doesn’t want you dead, taking him out destroys an entire organization,” Will explained gently. “So it could be his lieutenants acting on their own, at this point. It’s one thing for him to go down and they can deal with that, so long as he’s not permanently behind bars. His lawyers are lobbying for drug charges only. Only about five years, give or take, with time off for good behavior. We’d see him back out on the streets in about two and a half, probably.”

It wasn’t something easy to explain to anyone, much less someone so closely involved in the situation as Helen but it was the truth and Will thought someone, at least, owed her that much.

“He’s ready to turn and give us an awful lot of information on others for immunity in exchange. We don’t need his testimony if we have you, though, so he’s got motive to see you dead. Ashley, though, it doesn’t fit with the pattern. I feel like we might be dealing with more than a simple solution. It’s not for us to figure out, anyway. My job is to keep you safe and your job is just to tell the judge what you know. The rest of it is in the hands of the other investigators.”

Will _had_ been investigating it but it wasn’t anything he really wanted to share with Helen right now. He’d passed his theories on to Abby and to the others involved in the Druitt case and that was about all he could do, at this point. He wanted to be doing more, sure, but there was at least one life to be worried about that couldn’t afford him trying to steal glory at the risk of exposing her. He smiled a little at her and squeezed her shoulder again.

“Got any ideas for what you want me to pick up while I’m in town? I’d bring you with me but you’re too recognizable. Trust me, I don’t like it, but maybe we can prevent having to be separate in the future, yeah?” Will tugged on one of her long, dark curls and decided it might be a good idea to pick up a wig or hair dye so that if they were stuck here for a while, she’d be able to do something other than putter around a four room cabin with nothing to do. “Ever wanted to be a redhead?”

Helen narrowed her eyes at him and Will laughed and released her hair. “I presume you intend to have me dye my hair. Perhaps a haircut will also be in order, if we’re going that route, and hopefully after all this business is over I’ll be able to have my own hair once again. I’m naturally blonde, though. I only started dyeing it dark after I started going grey.” Will tried to imagine her as a blonde and failed, miserably, but given Ashley had platinum blonde hair, it shouldn’t have been too outside the realm of possibility. Besides, Helen had a creamy complexion that just didn’t fit with how dark her hair was.

“I’ll pick up something, then,” Will promised. It was the least he could do, to give her that little bit of freedom, and with a haircut and new hair color, it would be safe enough to stick around town and off the main roads. Something, if not everything, and he was more than willing to offer it. It wouldn’t be a professional job, by any means, but they could manage.

Six hours, three stores and two trips to unload the car later, Will was settled on the couch with one of the books he’d bought for entertainment when Helen emerged from the bathroom, gently toweling her hair. It was short now, barely brushing against her collarbones, and there were blunt-cut bangs across her forehead where it had been bare before. The color was striking and, more important, looked nothing like Helen Druitt.

“Looks nice, Helen,” Will offered and she gave him a hint of a smile before settling in a chair opposite him, tucking her feet up under herself. She took one of the books piled on the low table and opened it, seemingly reading for a few minutes, before she closed it again. Restless, it looked like, and Will tried to convey openness without actually asking her if she needed to talk.

“I don’t feel like me. Does that even make sense? This whole situation is just bloody unnatural and I feel like my whole life is a maelstrom. This is just one more thing to add to the pile, I suppose, so I shouldn’t be so bothered but...I am. I’m bothered by a lot of things and my hair should hardly be important but it just doesn’t feel like me, like Helen, and I don’t know.”

It was a lot more than the hair, at least that’s what Will was assuming, but it wasn’t something he wanted to press on when she was feeling fragile and tender. He smiled a little, instead, and touched her knee lightly. “Then don’t be Helen. We can come up with an alias for you to use in town and you can be someone else entirely. Just think about it as being in a play, or something, and you don’t want to break character so you’re method acting. _Become_ whoever this redhead is and maybe it won’t feel so weird, if you own it?”

“Perhaps. I trust we’ll have plenty of time to suss that out.”

***

Normally, Abby wasn’t the one who went to the prison to interrogate a witness all Clarice Starling like but with Will out in the middle of nowhere with the witness, Abby was the de facto head of the Druitt investigation and she couldn’t help but feeling like she was in over her head. She was good with analysis and looking at things from the safety of her own desk but when it came to actually shaking someone down, she was _not_ the weapon of choice. As it was, she was nervous and wiped sweaty palms on her skirt before settling in a folding chair on one side of the the plexiglass partition. On the other side was John Druitt.

He was a lot more imposing in person than in photos and that was saying something. He was 6’4”, easy, and had taken to shaving his head in prison. Gaunt, tall, long fingers and big hands. Abby was about 5’6” on a good day and he simply...dwarfed her. It was a very good thing he was on the other side of the wall and she was armed because otherwise it would get ugly, fast, and Abby wasn’t going to last very long.

“If you came to talk, talk.” Abby felt a chill run down her spine at his voice, distorted though it was through a phone line and plastic but she tried not to let that show on her face as she shook her hair back over her shoulders and sat up a little straighter. She had questions and he had the answers she wanted so there was nothing to do but get in here and do her job. God, she wished Will was here.

“Did you have anything to do with Ashley Druitt’s disappearance?” His laugh made her laugh but while his was rich and warm it had an edge to it that made Abby’s high-pitched and juvenile. She took in a deep breath and tried to channel her inner Jodie Foster, her inner Will, her inner someone-who-knew-how-to-stare-down-John-Druitt.

“Look. We have you on enough drug charges to keep you in here for a very, very long time Mr. Druitt. It’s just going to be better for everyone if you come clean and the US Attorney’s office is more than willing to broker a deal if you cooperate.” Not much of a deal, considering, but Druitt could deliver them some very big fish, big fish that the FBI couldn’t land without his or some other insider’s help. “Did you have anything to do with your daughter’s disappearance?”

If he was nervous or had a tell, Abby couldn’t see it. Druitt shifted in his chair and leaned back, posture saying nothing other than the fact that he had all day to do this, he had answers and no, Abby couldn’t have them. His lips curved into a smile and Abby bit her lip hard enough to draw blood in an attempt to keep from losing her cool any more than she had already. This was _not_ going well.

“No. I’m a murderer, a rapist and a drug trafficker. I will do anything for money. I will _not_ and have _not_ hurt my daughter. Whatever my issues with Helen are, they do not and have never extended to Ashley. If you would spend more time actually investigating her case instead of trying to get me to flip on my organization, you may actually find her real abductor. Find Ashley and I will give you anything you want, provided I have full immunity. Otherwise,” he murmured, tapping his head lightly with one finger, “Everything you want will remain locked up here for the foreseeable future.”

 _This is useless,_ Abby thought, and stood up to call the guard back in and get the hell out when Druitt tapped at the glass and mimed the phone up against his ear with two fingers. Abby picked up the receiver but she didn’t hold out hope for anything particularly enlightening; he seemed to have the patience of a monk. That wasn’t so good in Ashley’s case, considering she’d already been missing for three weeks.

“If you want to actually make a dent in finding Ashley, you might want to check up on some old friends. I haven’t always kept the company I keep now and some of the company I kept has changed, if you will, to better fit their new stations. It could be helpful toward your case, Agent Corrigan.”

Abby hadn’t introduced herself but there could have been half a dozen guards who’d mentioned her name from when she first walked in and she cursed lightly under her breath. This was one cliche after another and unlike Clarice, Abby didn’t actually have any more real, tangible evidence than she’d had when she walked in. Damn.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find her, and when we do, unless you start talking you’re going to be spending an awful lot of time contemplating the meaning of life, Mr. Druitt. If I were you, I’d start working on telling some stories.” It was kind of quippy and snappy and as she walked away, Abby was smiling. She hadn’t done that badly and as scary as that guy was, anyone would have gotten the heebie jeebies trying to stare him down.

She waited until she got in her car and pulled out of the prison before dialing Will, wanting to update him on what Druitt said and hoping, maybe that Creepy McPaintsalot would know what kind of “old friends” he’d been talking about and give them some solid leads. It was worth a shot, anyway, and Abby would have been lying if she didn’t admit, at least to herself, that hearing Will’s voice and Will possibly being _proud_ of her was worth all the anxiety of the past half hour.

“Zimmerman.”

Well. Someone stopped checking his caller ID. “It’s me, Ab. I’m on my way back from seeing Druitt in lockup,” she explained, flipping from handheld to Bluetooth while she navigated back from the prison to the field office. It was kind of a long drive, the kind that made her nervous, and at least filling Will in on the case would make the miles burn faster and put her one step closer to the relative safety of her desk, her coffeepot and the piles and piles of research she’d need to do in order to figure out which old friends Druitt had been blathering about or if it’d been a red herring.

“What is it, Abby?” Will sounded tired, somehow, and while that would normally net a ‘what’s wrong?’ out of her, she didn’t have time for it today. If he was too busy entertaining the stuffy doctor to actually do his job it wasn’t really Abby’s concern or something she’d sympathize with, not when she was still high on getting _something_ out of Druitt.

“I went to question Druitt on his daughter’s disappearance. Everyone else who’s gone there has been trying to get him to flip and name his higher-ups in The Five since Druitt’s the highest ranked player we’ve ever bagged on something and anyway, he gave me the shakedown about how he’d never hurt his daughter but as I was leaving, he told me to check up on some old friends of his. I was going to do some research but I was thinking maybe you could get Dr. Dreary to talk? She’s been with him for a while.” It all came out in kind of a breathless rush since she was both excited and nervous about the new lead and Will didn’t respond for a few moments, making her that much more nervous.

“You did good, Abby, so you can stop freaking out.” That, at least, was warm and friendly and Abby couldn’t help but smile. Something about Will’s voice always calmed her down and made her feel like she could do anything. He would have been a fantastic psychiatrist, if he’d gone that route.

“I’ll ask Helen what she thinks and see if she can come up with some names. I’ve got remote access out here but if you come up with anything in the office, forward it to me? Between the three of us, we ought to at least get some solid leads about the organization in general if not Ashley’s disappearance. I still don’t know the motive, though. There haven’t been any demands or anything as far as we know...if she was taken for leverage on Druitt not to flip on his partners, you’d think they’d have told him. What did you get from him?”

Abby shivered just remembering it. “He’s cold as ice, Will. If he’s been threatened, I’m not going to be able to tell and he’s not the kind of guy to reach out and touch someone. If he knows, he’s sitting on it, and he’s probably waiting to see if he can play it out to his own advantage or something, if I had to guess.”

“Probably. Still, I’ll get some names and we’ll work from there. And Abby? Be careful. This guy has fingers everywhere and I don’t want anything happening to you because they’re trying to find us, okay?”

It wasn’t like she was a first year agent or anything but Abby figured Will was just being overprotective - he had a tendency to do that - so she decided to take it in stride and ride the high of her success for a little while before diving back into the case headfirst. It could keep while she got celebratory ice cream, at least, and maybe by the time she was done Will would have called her back with names.

“Gotcha, Z-man. Go tuck Dr. Crumpets in and see if you can get a bedtime story out of her?” Abby could hear a groan from Will before he disconnected the line and she was too happy to read into it. She’d gotten a break. A big one.

***

“Anything enlightening?” Helen’s voice startled him slightly and when he looked up, Will suspected he was more deer in the headlights than cool, calm and collected. He fiddled a little with his phone, drawing a nail along the outer edge, while he contemplated her question. Enlightening, sure, but something that might be painful for her to relive depending on what memories his question would dredge up.

“Yeah. That was Abby, she just got back from seeing your ex in prison. She was asking him about Ashley.” That earned him a sharp gasp from Helen and she nodded quickly. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line and her skin, already pale, had gone from creamy to an ashen, chalky white. Her eyes were wide, pupils constricted in the bright light of the kitchen.

“Anyway, she tried to get him to divulge whether or not he knew anything about Ashley and after saying he didn’t, he mentioned maybe checking into some old friends. You wouldn’t happen to know what old friends he was talking about, would you?” Helen still looked startled but she’d recovered enough to cross to the living room and settle in one of the chairs, legs tucked under her. Classic defense position, actually, but Will didn’t comment aloud.

“Can’t imagine. We’ve known so many people over the years. I could make a list of everyone we still kept in contact with, I suppose, but I might miss a few since I left my address book at home...it’d be the most recent people, at least. I’m sure everyone has a few people on their Christmas card list that they don’t really actually know. Give me a day or two to think on it and compile a list?”

Will nodded. It wasn’t like they’d be able to have answers immediately even if she could write down all their likely suspects by rote and they’d have to rule out the ones who were dead or in prison already before really making a go of it. Almost on impulse, he drew closer and squeezed her shoulder lightly in comfort and was shocked when she slid a hand up to cover his. It was strangely intimate and Will thought that while they’d made good progress toward a working relationship it had to be lingering stress from the attempt on her life that had drawn them this close this quickly.

“I’ll do everything I can to help, Will, I just don’t know what a list of our friends is going to do other than widen the playing field. Anything you need, though, I’m happy to provide. We’ve met and interacted and been close to so many over the years. That’s the danger of politics - a load of acquaintances and very few true friends.”

Will was still standing behind her chair and at that, he came around and knelt before her, taking her hands in his and squeezing lightly. Okay, probably way too forward for the kind of relationship they were (supposed) to have but they’d had a rough few days. As long as she didn’t look like she wanted to bolt, he wasn’t going to stop giving the physical affection. If anything, it seemed to calm her down when she looked manic and ready to run.

“I’m sure there’s a few, Helen.” She shook her head and gave him a sad little smile, the corners of her mouth rising for a moment before falling again. So much about her was sad and anxious and it wasn’t always in an obvious way; in fact, her anxiety was rarely obvious unless her temper flared. It was just an overall aura, a mood, and it had come out in the deep twilight paintings she’d done and now it was there in the way she held herself, the way she held his hands and the soft, melancholy tone to her voice.

“No, nobody came when John was arrested or when Ashley went missing. I got a few cards, a few fruit baskets - really, what does one send a friend when her life’s come apart at the seams? Somehow I don’t think that ever got covered in the language of flowers. It didn’t help matters much that what few friends John and I did have stopped making an effort with me when I refused their calls for weeks on end. Even the persistent give up after a while.”

Will knew what it was like to get buried in his work and while there were a few guys in the Bureau that he was on a friendly enough basis to go out drinking with and there was always Abby, he spent most of his downtime alone. He was comfortable with his own company, sure, but sometimes it was nice to know there was someone out there who cared enough to drive across town just to hang out and catch up. He didn’t get the sense Helen had done much of that before her divorce and after, well, she just seemed wrecked. It didn’t feel right on her, though, and Will wasn’t sure what _would_ feel right on Helen Druitt. He also wasn’t sure why he had a burning desire to find out.

He rubbed his thumb over the back of one of her hands. “You need to go shopping for new friends. If you wouldn’t die of kitsch, I’d suggest going and taking a pottery class or something. Even athletes cross-train...maybe it’d be cross-training for artists? Go learn a different medium and learn to paint better?”

It got a laugh even if it was shaky advice at best and after a few more moments of kneeling there he squeezed her hands and stood to go to the couch, settling on the edge so he still seemed engaged in their conversation. He also got the sense, just from how she acted and her little tics when she spoke, that Helen Druitt had spent a lot of her time being ignored. He didn’t know if that was all Druitt’s fault but he’d seen the documentation from their divorce proceedings and he’d seen the police reports for assault; Druitt had always been too slick to have a domestic violence charge stick and Helen had withdrawn a lot of her complaints too, which just enabled the situation. Maybe being ignored had been better for her.

“Perhaps. Though, if we’re here much longer, I suspect I’ll be painting the walls. I’m going mad with this much plain wood and stock decoration. I lived in a subdivision, certainly, but I at least had some character inside my house.” Will grinned at her for that.

“If by character you mean clutter, yeah. I’m sure if we’re here much longer, entropy will start taking over. I’ll wake up strangled by a scarf.” Helen frowned a little but it dissolved into a laugh after a few seconds and one of the most brilliant smiles Will had ever seen. She could sell toothpaste to a baby with a smile like that and she’d even graced him with the dimple he’d only seen a hint of up until now.

“Hardly. I don’t have any accessories here, Will, and it will take me quite a while to build up the entropy I had so masterfully displayed in my own home. I suppose you’re going to have to suffer with neat, tidy and sterile for just a little while longer until I can break the place in.” Will laughed at that one, a laugh that was a little too loud to be polite and a little too goofy to be anything but genuine and his laugh had started her up again. It felt...good. It felt good to laugh and have fun after being so stressed and for a moment, Will forgot he was here on assignment and it’d started feeling like a trip with a close friend.

“Well, maybe I’ll just hold the accessories hostage until you give me a list, huh?” Maybe it was toeing the line, to tease, but Helen seemed to take it in stride and the mirth in her smile hadn’t faded any. She nodded quickly and held up a hand, still giggling and gasping for breath, and Will waited (mostly) patiently for her to both catch her breath and the train of thought that had derailed somewhere back during discussions of entropy.

“Right then. So if I give you what you need, you’ll just pop down to the general store and buy me a Birkin? I’ll be sure to keep that in mind and negotiate for better pay.” She paused for a moment then and tucked her hair behind her ear, softened but no less happy-seeming than she’d been earlier.

“I’ll have you a list by in the morning, Will, along with my own notes as to who would be most likely to have the means and motive to want John, myself and Ashley eliminated. You have my word that I’ll be treating this with utmost sincerity and that I’m cognizant of how crucial this piece of evidence could be.”

***

It was quiet when Will woke the next morning, almost too quiet, and a quick peek out of the windows in the bedroom showed a world blanketed in white. It was October, a little early for snow, but up in the mountains like this it wasn’t completely unheard of. It was kind of pretty, actually, and it was the kind of heavy snow they didn’t normally get in Seattle. Actually getting up from the air mattress revealed that the bed beside him was made up: either Helen hadn’t slept at all (likely) or she’d woken up before him. She’d still been in the living room when Will had wanted to go to bed the night before and he’d made her come back to the bedroom so he’d at least be close by while he slept. Clearly, she’d snuck back out before he woke up and Will didn’t suppress his sigh of exasperation at that. It was kind of important that he was able to hear and see her at all times even if she felt relatively safe in the cabin.

The exasperation melted a little when he saw fresh coffee in the kitchen and Helen bent over a list that he presumed was the one he’d asked her to make. She looked up and confirmed his suspicions: she hadn’t slept. She had dark purple smudges beneath her eyes and a tremble in her hand that indicated a hell of a lot of coffee and no sleep. When he walked by her on his way to snag a cup of coffee, she held out the list toward him.

There were about thirty or forty names but she’d scratched out several and written information in the margins on several more. Some were circled and underlined and they were names _he_ recognized: big politicians, scientists, a banker named Nigel Griffin and a professor named James Watson. He didn’t know why those names were highlighted when others weren’t but he figured he could get Helen to explain it _after_ she slept.

“You need to sleep,” he said quietly, brushing a hand over her hair. He still didn’t know how he felt about the red but hey, it wasn’t really his call anyway. Except the part where he’d found himself attracted to her since he first saw her and it hadn’t really faded over the past few days of being in seclusion with her. If anything, it was worse, and when she looked up at him he could see that her eyes were bloodshot in a way he really, really hated.

“I mean it. I’ll go over this list with Abby while you’re out, okay? I’ll come sit on you if I have to.” That got him a little ghost of a laugh and Helen waved him off, shifting to get out of the chair and go back to bed. Will followed and that earned an eyebrow. Of course. It would be too easy if she just went to bed without protesting a little bit, wouldn’t it?

“I really don’t need you to watch me to ensure I’m sleeping. Besides, you left me completely alone when you went into town the other day. I’m sure that was more a breach of duty than letting me have a nap by myself, isn’t it?” She had a point, a good one, but Will could be just as stubborn. After staring her down for a little while, she shrugged and nodded toward the bedroom. Battle won, war still in progress.

“I might just like spending time with you, Helen.” Maybe that had been a stupid thing to say but it had a kernel of truth to it. She didn’t acknowledge it and toed out of her shoes before turning down the covers and sliding into bed. She patted the space beside her and Will settled there, list in hand. He’d need to confer with Abby, of course, and they’d probably need to do a hell of a lot of research before making any moves but it was a good start, one of the better ones he’d gotten on this case.

“Do you really know Nikola Tesla, then?” He wasn’t the actual scientist, just a descendant with the same name, and he worked as a weapons contractor for several governments. Will didn’t like the feel of the guy but he didn’t know that what he did was necessarily _illegal_ , just really bad ethics. Somehow he suspected the guy didn’t really care about that so long as his pockets were getting lined.

“He and I were friends at Oxford, yes. We dated for an extremely short while before I started dating John.” Clipped, certainly, but not entirely cold and Will had to wonder if that was all there was to the story. Tesla had been a sort-of ally of the US for the last ten years or so and seemed to love being on camera more than he loved actually using his brain to do something decent for people; as someone who was decidedly-humble, Tesla’s cheesy grin and over-the-top ego grated on Will.

“I’ll ask you about the rest of them after you sleep,” Will said quietly, running his hand through her hair again and brushing it back off her face. She didn’t seem to be uncomfortable with that and when he moved to take his hand away, she wrapped her hand around his wrist lightly. Unexpected, to say the least, but definitely not unwelcome.

“Helen?” She tugged him down to lay next to her and he followed, laying on his side and rolling over to face her. She half-smiled, still exhausted looking but never anything less than beautiful, and leaned in to press a kiss lightly to his mouth. Okay, that was _completely_ unexpected and Will sort of stared at her like a landed fish, mouth half-open in shock.

“Sorry. I did that on the spur of the moment,” Helen said and Will shook his head before cupping her cheek and brushing against her mouth with his thumb. Maybe the forced intimacy of the past few days wasn’t just affecting him and it had affected her too. Will still felt like it was taking advantage, though, and didn’t want to press it when she was feeling vulnerable. He wasn’t in her league, no way and no how, and he was pretty sure the kiss was just that: vulnerability on her part.

He was also human and she was beautiful so maybe it was taking advantage but he leaned in and kissed her anyway, pleased when her lips parted and she deepened it without him pressuring her. Her mouth was so soft and she smelled amazing and it had really been way too long since he’d kissed a woman if he was focusing on that and not the task at hand. When he broke away, he kissed her forehead lightly.

“I did that on the spur of the moment too,” he admitted, getting a laugh from her. She had a gorgeous laugh. Helen’s eyes were still a little dazed when she rolled over and curled up, presumably to get a nap, and instead of pulling out his laptop to work up some preliminaries for Abby to work up, Will slid beneath the blankets and close to her, one arm draped across her waist. He didn’t need the nap, no, but it just felt nice to hold her and he hoped she’d forgive him for taking that liberty.

***

Helen was still asleep by the time Will blinked awake again and he was kind of glad for it if only because it meant she didn’t see the stupid, sappy look on his face. It had been just a kiss, sure, but it had been something sweet in a shitty week and he suspected they’d both kind of needed it. He was inclined to let her keep sleeping since she’d been up all night but he opted just to get his laptop and the list and work from bed. Googling wouldn’t take long, at least, and while the heavy background checks would take a lot longer, it was surprising how much you could come up with just by typing a name and a few descriptors into a search box.

He started with the name he didn’t know, Nigel Griffin, and a news article and a photo popped up as the first hit:

>   
> 
> 
> Nigel Griffin & Helen Druitt Donate Millions To Child Literacy
> 
> Nigel Griffin (36) and Helen Druitt (32), partners of financial powerhouse Griffin International give back to Griffin’s childhood home in east London by building a multi-million dollar library with a focus on children’s books and outreach programs. Griffin, often seen as a gregarious man, often spends his time reading to children when not brokering international finance deals. Helen Magnus is an esteemed surgeon at Royal London Hospital and a pioneer in trauma surgery. The two met as undergraduates at Oxford and have been giving back to the community since.
> 
>   
> 

Will let his gaze drift between the photo of the woman on the screen, laughing at something Griffin had said while reading a book to six small children, to the woman asleep beside him in bed. She’d been untroubled then and now, Helen Druitt had lines that no amount of makeup or sleep could cover up. Still beautiful, yes, but haunted in a way that the Helen Druitt on the screen never could be.

Based on what he knew about them, it had to have been shortly after Helen had emigrated and Will couldn’t help but wonder where Druitt had been when she was becoming a partner in an international banking group and doing charity work in libraries back in merry old England. While it was interesting to delve into Helen’s private life on a personal level, it wasn’t necessarily conducive to his work on the list and after compiling a few more things on Griffin, he moved on to the next target on the list: James Watson.

Watson was a professor at the old alma mater, it seemed, and spent much of his time publishing in every journal he could find. A medical doctor as well, it seemed, but other than an internship, he’d never practiced. He preferred the theory of it, Will guessed, and he could understand that. He’d never gone on to medical school because he couldn’t stand the idea of actually performing a surgery or an autopsy and was perfectly content to analyze behavior from the outside.

Most of the photos and hits he could find for Watson were in relation to his studies in biogerontology and after attempting to make his way through one of the papers, Will took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose; while he could be incredibly methodical at times, he was no scientist. Not like Watson. Will backed out of the paper in question ( _Defying the Hayflick limit through chemically-induced telomere lengthening, James Watson and Adam Worth, 1983._ ) and found a younger photo of Watson with a striking blonde woman at his side.

 _  
_

> _  
> 
> 
> Helen Magnus and James Watson, second years, 4 April 1976
> 
>   
> _

_  
_

_How in the world is Helen over fifty years old?_ Will looked at the photo on screen, Helen all of twenty, and tried to reconcile that with the fact that she didn’t look a day over 45 now. It was like ten years of her life had just...disappeared, somehow, and he wondered if it had anything to do with the Five and with Ashley’s disappearance. It was a long-shot, obviously, but when faced with information that didn’t make sense, Will’s natural instinct was to try and force it to fit with the pieces he knew: Helen and John married, Helen and John had powerful friends, Ashley.

He contemplated calling Abby about it, see if she could run down some leads but he decided, first, that maybe he ought to just talk to Helen and see if she’d confess how, exactly, she’d stopped the clock. Something like that would be worth millions in both legal and illegal markets and if Helen had knowledge of why and how, someone might exact a very large price for it. Maybe even as large a price as Ashley Druitt.

Will made a few more notes before rousing Helen with the promise of coffee and went to go make good on that while he tried to decide how to broach the subject. It wasn’t something that normally came up, after all, and he didn’t want to immediately put her on the defensive by going at her like an attack dog. No, he needed to coax it out, and slow, so he could get the whole picture and make her think it was her idea to tell him.

He started with the coffee, fixed just the way she liked and pushed sliently across the rough-hewn wooden table while Helen slowly rejoined the waking world. She was kind of cute like that, all sleepy and wide eyed, but Will pushed that down in order to focus on what he really needed to know about Watson and if it tied in at all with her and Druitt.

“I started looking at the names. You went to Oxford in the eighties, right?” There, start with a simple fact twisted slightly and maybe she’d slip up and correct him and leave the door open. It was worth a shot, anyway, and Will tried to keep his best poker face up while he waited on her response. The response was slow and dulled by sleep but probably more honest, given the circumstances.

“The seventies. I was in medical school in the eighties.” That had been easy, almost too easy, and Will wondered if she’d caught onto him. Helen was smart, no doubt, but she wasn’t so shrewd psychologically as Will was and the answer had been given without guile or artifice. Okay. She’d been at university in the seventies, then, medical school in the eighties. Ashley had been born after she’d achieved some small measure of success in her career and had emigrated to the United States. When had the clock stopped, then? Before or after Ashley?

“Looking pretty good for over fifty, then,” Will said, smirking at her, and that got an annoyed headtoss and a delicate snort for his troubles. “Hardly, Will, I’m forty-five.” She _looked_ forty-five. Her passport and driver’s license both said she was forty-five but it still didn’t explain how she could be twenty something in the late seventies and only in her mid forties now, not unless...

“I read Watson’s paper. The telomere thing.” Will slid his hands across the tabletop in an impromptu demonstration as he spoke, hoping he understood it enough to get her to talk him through the rest. It was a little gambit, considering she might see right through him and clam up again, but all Will could do was _try._

“So, if I understand it correctly, this...chemical Watson discovered lengthens the end of the telomeres kind of like the caps on shoestrings, right?” Will mimed cell division with his hands, pulling his fingers apart. Helen nodded with pressed lips, face a little paler than usual but otherwise not revealing any tells.

“Now, and this is the part that hangs me up, the chemical interference makes the telomeres longer? So the cell line goes cancerous, right?”

Helen shook her head again and bit her lower lip, her tell, and let out a slow, soft breath. “Not entirely, Will. The chemical is supposed to inhibit telomere shortening in cell lines. In a small portion of the populace, this results in a functional immortality, provided the subject continues taking the drug to inhibit shortening and, eventually, cell death. Majority of the population, unfortunately, succumbs to a particularly aggressive form of cancer within a few years. Cancer cells, you see, don’t ever get the signal to stop dividing and their telomeres don’t shorten. Immortality at the cost of life. Cruel irony, isn’t it?”

Helen’s voice had gone sad at that and Will reached across to touch her hand lightly, frowning at the tremble in it. Something had spooked her now, on top of being sad, and for a moment he wavered on whether or not he should keep pressing to get answers or if he should back off. If she was any other witness, the choice would be automatic to press on; he couldn’t help unless he knew everything. But this was Helen and Helen was the witness that he apparently broke all his rules for and he brushed his thumb against the back of her hand lightly to encourage her.

“Tell me. I can’t help unless I know everything and I think you know that, don’t you?”

Helen shot him a dark glance before drawing in a deep breath and rolling her shoulders back, seemingly steeling herself for something particularly unpleasant. When she spoke, her voice was cool and soft with only a hint of fear beneath it and the entirety of it was laced with regret, with sorrow. Whatever she and Watson (and apparently Worth, who hadn’t been on her list) had been up to hadn’t been entirely good.

“James developed a serum from a line of particularly aggressive cells he’d gotten from a young girl with leukemia. The initial experiment was to design a targeted virus therapy that would seek out and destroy cancer cells with certain cellular markers, namely, the enzyme that prevents telomere shortening. However, something extraordinary happened. We tested the serum on ourselves first, James and I, and while the effects were subtle at first, they were no less groundbreaking. We healed so quickly that I could slice my palm open and watch it close up within ten minutes. Surely, if we could do this, we could save one little girl from leukemia, couldn’t we?”

Helen paused and sipped at her coffee, the tremble that much more evident in her hand. “We didn’t want to go public yet. I wasn’t even named in the research, having just tagged along because I thought it was interesting and volunteering myself as a guinea pig for something I had no business injecting into my body. James’ research partner, Adam Worth, the original cell line came from his daughter. Instead of curing her cancer, it left her in some strange limbo - constantly healing, adapting, but the cancer was one step ahead. She’d never have the healing factor that James and I had and, worse, her mind started to go. James and I medically induced a coma and decided that we’d simply need more time to figure it out. More...resources. We offered the serum to Nigel, a financier we’d gone to school with and John, out of my own selfish desire to have the man I loved with me for as long as I artificially extended my life. James wanted to offer it to Tesla, in exchange for his help with stabilizing the formula and making contacts for government support. I allowed that as well.”

Helen raked a hand through her hair and when she looked at him again, the look in her eyes was positively painful. What she’d done had been far outside even the fringes of medical ethics and the fact that she’d given an experimental drug to two people outside the research community solely because she didn’t want to be alone was...yeah. Will didn’t really know what to think. Morals were always a gray area, sure, but this was pushing that even further.

“What I didn’t know, at the time, was that I was pregnant with Ashley. I agreed, after discovering I was pregnant, to stop taking the serum for fear it might affect her. John and the others continued, of course, and then things started going...downhill. Funny thing, immortality. It starts making you think you’re invincible, in ways, and we were all so damned arrogant. John developed a madness similar to Imogene, Worth’s daughter, and got increasingly violent. He developed a tumor that pressed against his frontal cortex, inoperable, and it affected his moods and his inhibitions. He and Nigel got into organized crime, drug trafficking and money laundering, and used Nigel’s bank as a front. Tesla was always a megalomaniac and he started building weapons for the government and brokering deals with the other side so both of them were lining his pockets. James has a particularly nasty predilection for cocaine and working girls, I’m afraid. I...I stopped. I suspect my anxiety disorder is a result of the serum I took but there’s no real way to reverse it. I destroyed all the samples, James and I, and none of us has had access to it in at least five years. Worth took the last of it to give to Imogene but she still languishes. Will, this can’t have anything to do with Ashley, can it?”

Helen had gone pale and Will was inclined to tell her to stop, that they could go over the rest of it later but if there was something in what she’d told him that’d help them find Ashley Druitt, he wanted it sooner rather than later. He reached across the table and took her hands, brushing his lips against her knuckles before dropping them back to the table. They were close, Will could feel it, and he only needed her to tell him a little more before they could put together a plan of attack.

“I can’t imagine why they’d take Ashley unless they suspect, somehow, they can reverse engineer a new version of the serum from her blood. Dear God. Ashley’s never...Ashley’s never had so much as a cold, Will. She doesn’t get injured, she doesn’t get sick...it worked. It bloody worked on her and now they’ve taken her...Christ. Someone knows. Whoever has her must know what she is and must be using this trial as a cover-up for their true intentions.”

Shit. As she’d told the story, Will had come to similar conclusions and, worse, he could see past them to deeper ramifications. “Look, Helen, I don’t think our sniper had anything to do with John. That bullet wasn’t standard gang weaponry, anyway, it was a high-powered sniper rifle, military issued. Something that someone like Nikola Tesla might be carrying around in his back pocket, from what you’ve said. I think you’re right, I don’t think any of this has to do with Druitt and I think they set him up to get caught to get him out of the way. Ashley’s the only thing he cares about now and if someone tried to hurt her, he’d be a hell of a stumbling block. Then there’s you, and I don’t think they meant to kill you. I think they meant to scare you so you wouldn’t put the pieces together and tell us. They _know_ you, Helen, and they know your anxiety. They’re feeding it to keep you out of the way. I’m not sure what Griffin’s hand is, except maybe Worth...maybe Worth promised him something in exchange for the funds. Maybe the patent for the serum?”

“Bloody hell,” Helen cursed lightly, shaking her head. “We’ve got to stop them. If they get wind of it, Ashley’s as good as dead, but they’ll keep her alive as long as possible to try and derive a perfect form of the serum. They’ll need test subjects too but they won’t have gotten them through the normal channels. How...how would you do that? Isn’t that what you do, as a profiler? Don’t you step into the shoes of the criminal and help re-enact the crime?”

 _Not exactly_ , Will thought, but he kept it to himself. In this particular instance, it was probably smart to try and do that very thing but how did one necessarily predict the moves of a grieving father with a god complex? Not using anything that got taught out of a textbook, that was for sure.

“We’ll check the papers for rings of disappearances. Homeless people, foreign tourists - people who won’t be missed immediately. There’s a good chance they’re not carrying this out in the US, too many chances they’d get discovered. Europe, maybe? We’ll widen the search to Great Britain and Europe, places where Griffin or Worth have contacts. Probably need to get a bead on Tesla, too.”

That meant calling Abby and trying to keep it hush-hush - Will was pretty sure if they knew what they were planning, Ashley was as good as gone. Could Abby be trusted to keep that secret? Did Will have a choice? Helen wasn’t exactly a sanctioned field agent and he wasn’t even sure she knew how to shoot a gun, much less defend herself in hand-to-hand without one. He was no James Bond himself, no, but he was capable enough not to get himself killed. Helen...he wasn’t so sure.

“I’m going with you. She’s my daughter.” And now Will was going to have to have a difficult conversation sooner rather than later. Helen was a liability, at best, and at worse, she would draw more attention to them. Still, she knew the players in this game and she knew Ashley, had a vested interest in seeing her home and safe. It was stupid (incredibly stupid) but he felt like it might be a smarter bet to put his money on Helen and her determination than Abby and her training.

“Research, first. Right now, we don’t know if she’s dead or alive and I want you something approaching prepared before we go storming in. Two weeks. We take two weeks, try to teach you some basic stuff and try to figure out where they’re basing operations out of. Maybe you can try to make contact, play scared victim for them? They might let something slip if they don’t think you’re a threat. And get in touch with Watson, if you think he might be lucid enough to help us.”

Two weeks. It was both too long and not long enough.

***

Three days in and Will wasn’t really sure if Helen was ever going to be field material but she wasn’t as hopeless with a gun as he feared. She had decent aim, considering, and when she took her anxiety meds she was actually steadier than he was. Having a purpose instead of mindless fear driving her day and night seemed to help, at least, and she was less moody, less prone to crying jags and fits of pique.

In another life, maybe, Helen Druitt might have been a damn good operative. She wasn’t going to be BAU material like he was, no, but she didn’t crack as easily under pressure as he thought she might and she knew several languages that were probably going to come in handy when they went overseas. He’d been scouring the internet for reports of missing persons and had come across a rash of kidnappings in and around Prague. Prague was the new Paris, the it place for the students and backpackers and the hipsters who didn’t want to seen as last year’s fad.

They’d set up a makeshift target along the treeline and while there hadn’t been any more snow since the first snowfall, it was still cold enough that the drifts hadn’t melted any and the heavy, gray clouds promised more snow sooner rather than later. Helen’s breath came out in short, sharp puffs and her hand trembled a little as she lined up a shot and missed by a few inches. It was the difference between wounding and killing and Will came up behind her, straightening her posture and steadying her aim. He whispered against her ear and the soft skin of her cheek.

“Try it now. Your shoulders were slumped like you were already expecting the recoil.” Helen didn’t speak, merely lined up the shot and took it again, hitting just inside the bullseye they’d painted. There were better shots, yes, but this was pretty damned good. Will coaxed her into another, still close behind her to correct her aim if necessary and after Helen had finished the round she slid back against his chest.

“Exhilarating, isn’t it? Feel my heart, it’s going like a rabbit’s.” Helen tugged his hand up to rest against her pulse and Will could feel it drumming, fast and furious and not unlike his own. Emotionally charged situation, guns were inherently powerful, power was sexy...there were reasons for why they felt like this and most of them had to do with hormones and adrenaline but Will didn’t particularly care.

The snow had started to fall again while they stood there, tiny snowflakes catching in Helen’s curls and along the tips of her eyelashes. Will turned her in his arms and kissed her, hesitant only in the fact that he didn’t want to scare her or make her think he wasn’t taking the situation seriously (he was, more serious than he’d taken a case in a long, long time) and when her mouth yielded under his, he took more.

He thrust his hands into her hair the way he’d wanted to the first time he’d seen her without it ironed flat and let it spill over his fingers. That apparently sparked something in her, though, because she let out a soft whimper and yielded even more, her soft mouth parting for his and her tongue sliding against his in a way that sent shivers down his spine. Will had the presence of mind to pull away after a few minutes and wished he hadn’t: her mouth was red from his kisses and her hair was a mess where he’d tangled his hands in it. He was about two seconds from providing an excuse and an apology when she pressed one gloved finger against his mouth.

“Don’t you dare. If I didn’t want it, I’d say so.” That seemed to settle it from her end, at least, and Will couldn’t help but grin when she slid her hand down to find his, squeezed it, and tugged him along behind her back to the cabin. It had been a while since he’d felt comfortable enough with a woman to do this and while he didn’t know for sure, he felt like it’d been a while for Helen too.

With that in mind, after stomping the snow off his boots and kicking them off (and making sure she’d done the same), he tugged her into his arms and just held her for a moment before dropping a soft, sweet kiss on her forehead. No words, but every action saying _we don’t have to do this_ and _it’s okay if you just want this_. Helen leaned in and kissed him again, more fierce than before, and as she pulled away she nipped at his lower lip with her teeth. Her eyes were dark and her cheeks were flushed from what he guessed was both arousal and cold.

Her fingers had moved up to grip his collar at some point and she smoothed them down the front of his shirt, fingers gliding over the buttons like she was committing them to memory for later, more illicit reasons. Will wasn’t sure what she was doing, exactly, and as he opened his mouth to actually ask her what they were doing, Helen leaned in and whispered hot against his ear before following it by kissing along his neck. Jesus. Jesus, this woman. Apparently once she got warmed up, there was no stopping her and Will was very okay with that, especially okay when he actually processed what she’d said before:

“Stop being a gentleman and take me to bed, Will.”

Well, he wasn’t going to stop being a gentleman, that was just how he was wired, but he could make the second part of that happen without breaking the first. He nodded once, though he figured that was more for himself than for her, and tugged her from the door to the bedroom, closing the door behind them even though it wasn’t like there was anyone else in the cabin to see or here. It was symbolic, in a way, the closing of one door in order to explore something new and different and Will wasn’t sure why he was so up in his head about having sex with a beautiful woman - and she was beautiful, achingly so.

He was quiet for a few moments and when Helen started to take off her sweater, he stopped her with another long kiss, head tilting to capture her mouth and his own hands sliding down from the small of her back to cup her ass and drag her flush against him. If there were any doubts in her mind about whether or not he wanted to do this (and he imagined there might be, considering how hesitant he’d played it) he was pretty sure they were all eliminated once she realized just how hot and hard he was for her.

He managed to drag himself away from her mouth by some miracle and pushed the sweater up and off, tossing it vaguely behind her so he could catch her in another kiss. He tipped her head back and made his way down her throat, licking and sucking and learning the taste of her skin and scraping his teeth against her pulse point hard enough that a tiny bruise blossomed there at the hollow of her throat. It wasn’t lost on him that her hands, worked between them to start tugging at his shirt and undoing his own buttons, seemed to have lost the tremble since they started doing this. She was hot for him, aroused, sensual, beautiful but she wasn’t _scared_ for the first time since he’d met her.

He pulled away slightly once she had his buttons undone so she could push his shirt back off his shoulders and it hadn’t cleared his hands before he had his back in her hair again, curling among soft tresses and tugging hard when she managed to pop the button on his jeans. He backed them up against the bed, then, tangling his legs with hers as they kissed. It felt ridiculously teenager to him, making out, but Christ, her _mouth_. Will managed to pull away and propped on his elbows, looking down at her.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re probably the best kisser in the universe?” Okay, it sounded starstruck teenage boy of him to say that but the laugh and blush he got in return made it worth any minor embarrassment. Also of interest was the flush down her neck and chest and Will chased it with his mouth, laying another, softer kiss in her cleavage.

“Can I?” Her answer was a swift nod and Will lifted up slightly to unhook her bra, tugging it down and tossing it to the side. Her skin was creamy pale highlighted with a warm flush that simply highlighted how fucking gorgeous she was. Her breasts were full and soft and when he leaned down to tease one of her nipples with his mouth, Helen’s hips arched upward and she hooked her leg back around his knees.

“Like that, huh?” Helen huffed lightly and pulled his hair and Will couldn’t help but laugh for a moment, amused that she was so impatient and he apparently felt like they had all the time in the world. His erection didn’t feel the same way, no, but he was thinking with the head on his shoulders for the time being. Sex wasn’t something to rush through to get over, it was something to savor, and even when he made a habit of no-strings attached sex, he tried to keep that in mind.

Savoring it meant switching from one breast to the other, ignoring her groan of frustration and muttered “Get on with it, Will,” in favor of making her pant and squirm for him. By the time he pulled away, her nipples were peaked and red and that flush he’d been watching since they first started kissing had only gone brighter as time went on. He smirked a little before dropping a kiss over her navel and lingering there while his hands unbuttoned her jeans and worked her zipper down. He didn’t have to ask before Helen lifted her hips to help him get the jeans down and off and Will let his fingertips graze just along the edge of her panties for a moment, enjoying the silky texture when contrasted against her smooth skin.

He slid down a little more and laid a kiss to the inside of her left knee, eliciting a sharp gasp from Helen that melted into one of the sexiest sounds he’d ever heard a woman make before. It was halfway between a sigh and a whimper, whatever it was, and it had just become his goal to make it happen over and over and over again. He kissed a few inches higher and sucked a mark against her thigh, which got the sigh-whimper along with his hair pulled for good measure and when he kissed along the crease where her thigh met her hip, the noise she made was downright indecent.

“Will, _please_. Stop teasing.”

Will muffled a laugh against her inner thigh before mouthing her through the damp, silky material of her panties and while he knew that was teasing, it was a little closer to the goal. She was soaked and when the tip of his tongue traced around her clitoris, her hips rocked up against his face. God. He slid his hands up to hook in the panties and tugged them down slowly, letting them slide down to just past her knees before pressing his mouth against her and tasting her, tongue making a lazy circuit along sensitive skin and circling around her clitoris again. Maybe this was just a warm-up for some guys, just something to be done so that all the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed but not for Will. He liked knowing that the universe had narrowed down to this woman and making her feel good for a little while and that he didn’t have to focus on anything but her for the time being.

Helen seemed a little less frantic after he’d started, thighs splaying open and whimpers and sighs going from tense to relaxed. Will lifted his head and grinned at her for a moment (which earned him an annoyed snort and a half-sincere swat to his head) before kissing halfway between her navel and thighs, an apology, of sorts. He lifted her legs up and over his shoulders before finding her clitoris again and sucking this time instead of teasing with the tip of his tongue and as he slid his fingers into her, Helen sounded that much more frantic. She was probably the most responsive woman he’d ever been with, hands down, and while he’d been with screamers before this was more natural than something put on for his benefit.

He thought she might be close, the way she was reacting, and instead of continuing the tease and the slow build he gave her steady suction and crooked his fingers slightly to try and bring the orgasm out of her sooner rather than later. The tandem sensation seemed to be enough for her as her hips arched one last time before he felt her tighten around his fingers in a vise-grip.

“Dear God, Will, _yes_ there, don’t...don’t stop.”

He slid his fingers out slowly but kept licking and petting her as she came down and a few moments later, her hand slid into his hair and played lightly with it. It was oddly soothing, that one gesture, and Will pillowed his head against her hip and just enjoyed it for a little while, enjoyed being the center of her attention and affection. Was this what it would be like to be the man in Helen Druitt’s life? If so, he wasn’t sure why John would have ever risked losing it.

“Helen? I want you.”

Three simple words and yet it felt like ripping the veil in two. It was one thing to do this for her, make her feel good, and quite another to cross the line and actually take something for himself. The lines were getting blurred between agent and witness, protector and ward and only when Helen answered with her own soft, “please,” did it feel like it was all right to take this and want this with her.

After taking a moment to shimmy off his own jeans and boxers, Will slid up to lay against her, cock hard and hot against her hip. He took a moment to brush her hair back off her cheeks before asking the next, possibly-indelicate question.

“Protection? Wasn’t on my list before coming out here.” Helen laughed and shook her head before leaning in and whispering against his ear that no, it wasn’t necessary, she’d had a depo shot recently and she trusted him. That was kind of shocking but Will wasn’t going to argue against it, not when she’d rolled them and was straddling his hips. He watched her face as she sunk down on his cock, her eyes drifting shut and her teeth worrying her lower lip as she let out a slow, satisfied hiss.

She caught his hands and tugged them to her hips as she rode him and it was all Will could do to keep his eyes open to just _watch_ her. She was gorgeous, glowing slightly from the flush of arousal and her own sweat and after letting her take control for a few minutes, Will curled his fingers tighter into her hips and arched up to meet her. He nudged lightly at her hips to try and roll them and she seemed to understand, sliding off him and rolling beneath him in one fluid movement. He wanted to kiss her while he was moving in her and did just that, catching her mouth in a long, slow kiss that felt more like breathing than anything else he’d done the past few years and he groaned as she slid one of her legs up over his hip and changed the angle so he hit her that much deeper. God.

“Not gonna last,” he warned her, burying his face against her neck and shoulder as he came, kissing and nipping lightly at the skin there as he pulsed out and tried to remember where he was and who he was. All he could think and breathe and comprehend was _Helen_ , though, and he wasn’t entirely back by the time he rolled off her and tugged her close to lay against him, hand stroking through her messy curls.

“Good for you, then? No...need for improvement on my end?”

Will eyed her warily before kissing her again, hot and hard, and when he pulled away they were both panting.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Helen laughed and nodded, falling quiet and her eyes drifted shut as Will stroked through her hair. She was beautiful like this. She was always beautiful, of course, but like this she seemed human again and untouched by tragedy - it was a good look on her and made her seem free and younger, if possible, and Will wondered if he’d ever get a chance to see her this relaxed and untroubled again. He found that he hoped so because in spite of doing everything he could _not_ to, he’d started to care about her.

He had a sneaking suspicion she cared about him too.

***

“This is the last time I let you talk me into this shit. Last time, Henry. Last time.” Kate had been hoping for a nice, quiet honeymoon-type thing even though they’d been married for three years and who takes a honeymoon three years in? She had wanted Egypt but Henry had said no and they’d settled on Prague which had started out as a vaguely good idea and sauntered way down into the depths of hell overnight.

“Well at least they haven’t strung us up by our feet and started auctioning us off or anything. It could be worse.” Kate snorted. Yeah, it was pretty close to _Hostel_ territory considering the two creeps had bagged them out of their hotel room and Kate hadn’t woken up until she was trapped in this creepy dungeon thing.

“Yet, Henry. They haven’t done that _yet._ ” There was a sigh from the other side of the room, the blonde chick, and Kate eyed her with a challenge in her eyes. They were all stuck, they were all miserable and blondie had no rights to infringe on her God-given American right to bitch and moan about being kidnapped on vacation by crazy, creepy people. Crazy, creepy people that Kate would like to point out hadn’t even done much other than draw blood and look generally menacing. Not a good start for a supervillain career.

“Look, it’s me they want. I don’t even know why they have you.” Blondie had been there longer than she or Henry, by the looks of it: her hair was lank and stringy and she looked thin, hollow cheeks. She seemed like she still had some fight, though, if her occasional contributions to her and Henry’s fights meant anything. Then again, she might just be fed up with their bickering: Kate could bicker with the best of them, no matter the situation.

“Why do you think they want you? Henry and I are just as American and touristy as you are,” Kate said and wondered why, exactly, she was arguing about who was more valuable in a creepy, fucked up hostage situation. It was probably because if there was anything Kate Foss hated, it was to be trapped, and she was going to kick and fight and scream until she got her way. Always had, always would.

“My parents are loaded and my dad’s a criminal. You do the math,” Blondie said listlessly and Kate considered that for a moment. Okay, she might have a point, considering it’d taken her and Henry three years to scrape up enough money to take this trip and neither was getting paid vacation for the time off. The clothes she was wearing gave truth to it, too, because while Kate wasn’t wealthy, she had a good eye for things and people who were and the jacket and boots Blondie was sporting were both Gucci and not knockoffs. Kate knew about knockoffs. Kate _made_ her living selling knockoffs.

So maybe it was Blondie they were truly after but that didn’t explain the whole blood-drawing thing. If it was a hostage for money type situation, wouldn’t it make more sense to force them to record tear-stained videos pleading for their lives or something? Maybe not for her and Henry, they pretty much only had each other, but for Blondie of the Rich and Possible Criminal Parents? It would make a ton of sense.

“What, is your dad John Gotti or something? I mean, my dad’s a criminal but I’m pretty sure a two bit safecracker from Chicago is of very little interest to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in there.” She actually preferred the one guy, the Canadian one, over the English guy. English Guy had a temper like a bulldog and could turn in two seconds. At least Canadian Dude was pretty steadily Mad Scientist territory. The devil you knew, after all, was a hell of a better than the unknown quantity.

“John Druitt,” Blondie said quietly. “That drug lord. That’s my dad. Mom split from him a couple years ago but it still doesn’t change the fact that he was doing all that shit while they were still married. I think he’s probably still waiting on a trial by now but I don’t know how long I’ve been here.” Kate didn’t keep up with the news much, especially not stuff like that, but she vaguely remembered hearing about that. She and Henry lived in Chicago, though, and she was pretty sure that had all happened out west. Kind of weird, for organized crime, but Kate wasn’t going to question it. What the fuck did it matter when they were probably going to die sooner rather than later?

“Oh. That’s heavy, then. I don’t know why the fuck they have me and Henry, then,” Kate said, shrugging as best she could with being tied up. There had to be a way out of here, had to be, and she just needed to focus and get Henry to use that big brain of his to focus too. Henry, at the moment, had his head down and looked like he was either praying or sleeping and considering the only church she’d ever seen Henry worship at was Comic Con, she was betting it was sleep.

“Hank, up and at em. Me and uh...Blondie, what’s your name?” Kate belatedly realized that she’d never actually asked her and other than assuming her last name was Druitt, she had no idea where to even start with a name. Blondie laughed a little, less listless than before, and gave a low response.

“It’s Ashley. Ashley Druitt.”

Well then. “Hank, me and Ashley are going to try to figure a way to get out of here and we’d appreciate it if you could manage to rouse yourself to contribute to the discussion.” Henry did rouse, a little, but his eyes were bloodshot and tired and he was rocking the kicked puppy look that meant nothing good was going to come out of him unless they got him the fuck out of here. “Buck up, Hank, I mean it. I’m not going down without a fight.”

Kate meant that too, actually, and she had seen a little fire in Blondie that meant she wasn’t giving up yet either. They needed a plan and they needed time to make it work; Kate knew there’d been other people trapped down here with them but after what felt like years and was probably just weeks, they’d dwindled one by one until it was just she, Hank and Ashley left. If Ashley was right and they were after _her_ , Kate was pretty damn sure that she and Hank weren’t leaving unless it was in a body bag and that was _not_ how Kate Foss was going out, no way and no how.

Any start on the plans was interrupted, though, when she heard footsteps from down what she imagined was a short hallway to some lab or something. She and Hank had never been taken down there but Ashley had and she hadn’t ever asked her what went on down there. Nothing good, probably, and Kate really didn’t want to find out. She was crossing her fingers that it was Canadian and not Mr. Hyde because Canadian was still remotely polite. Remotely.

“You three aren’t getting friendly, are you? It’s not summer camp, kiddos.” Canadian. At least that was the known quantity. He also had syringes and Kate steeled herself for another round of needle pricks. At least the damned things looked sterile and they were taking blood and not injecting them with shit; the last thing she wanted was to catch HIV and come out of here alive only to die later. Cruel fucking irony, that. Blondie...Ashley was first. She was always first and Canadian drew a couple syringes full of blood from her and sat them to the side. Kate had never really paid attention to it before because she really, really didn’t care for needles but it looked like Ashley didn’t even _bleed_. She didn’t have track marks and bruises on her arms either the way she and Hank did and that was just fucked up. As long as they’d been down here and been poked and prodded? She ought to look like a pincushion.

“Look, Dr. Rude and Canadian, just let me and Hank go. We don’t have anything you need, clearly, and you’ve got Wolverine over there already. Seriously. I won’t even tell anyone you kept us illegally locked up for God knows how long because I’m a giver, that’s who I am. Let. Us. Go.”

He laughed and Kate winced. Great. She’d just managed to piss him off instead of bargaining for freedom and she added insult to injury when he took her arm to inject her with what looked like _Blondie’s_ kooky comic book blood and Kate bit him instead of just letting him do it. That earned her a backhand across the face so hard that she felt like her teeth were rattling and she’d bit the inside of her cheek but it was worth it. So worth it.

“Look, just leave them alone. It’s me you want because of my dad, right? Big Bad John Druitt’s soft spot is his baby girl, we get it. Just fucking call my mother and she’ll give you whatever it is you want but we’re ending this. Those two,” Ashley said, nodding toward her and Hank, “Have nothing to do with anything. They sell knockoff purses and fake CDs on the street in Chicago and saved for years to come over here. Send them home, for God’s sake, and just do whatever the hell it is you want with me. Trust me, I can handle it.”

The doctor laughed, loud, and Kate heard more footsteps that meant his bad cop worse half was on the way. She hoped like hell Blondie hadn’t signed their death warrants but, if so, Kate was willing to give them hell until she went out and she figured Blondie was with her. Hank, well, Hank would do what needed to be done (she hoped) and if this was the end, there were things she needed to say, no matter who the company was.

“Hank, you listening?” When he grunted, Kate cleared her throat and tried not to choke up. Seriously, so stupid, choking up over Hank. Stupid, useless, worse-in-a-fight-than-a-girl Hank was not worth working up the waterworks for but they were here anyway and she guessed she’d just have to deal with the fact that she had an audience for something so private and secret of hers.

“I love you even if I’m never, ever forgiving you for getting me killed in a third world country.” Hank’s eyes went big and he nodded before whispering he loved her back and it was all kind of a cute and sweet moment, ruined only by Mr. Hyde showing up and hauling Blondie and Hank to their feet. Great. Leaving her alone to die, wonderful, and Kate struggled uselessly against her bonds.

“Touching, really. I’m sure Mr. Foss can agree? Come on, bring the other one, Nikola. She can watch while we perfect what we’ve been working on. It might provide some...motivation that we haven’t been able to provide as of yet.”

Oh fucking _fuck._.

***

Sex hadn’t come up again but given the situation and how bad an idea it had been to let a little target practice and sexual tension get to him, Will wasn’t overly concerned. It had been nice (amazing, wonderful, mind-blowing) but it wasn’t important when the important thing was finding Ashley before Worth and Tesla could actually engineer the serum. Worth, at least, seemed to be motivated only by curing Imogene but Will didn’t think Tesla had such noble motives and that was a little more scary than he wanted to comprehend. Super soldiers, anyone? Yeah. Not such a good thing.

He’d packed up what little they had and gotten Abby to overnight his passport (she’d asked about it, incessantly, and Will had put her off with a lie about moving Druitt up to Canada to better protect her). Helen had hers on her, luckily, and booking a flight to Amsterdam and then Prague wasn’t even that hard either. He didn’t know if she’d gotten in touch with Watson, though, and after double-checking their flight times (they had plenty of time, no need to worry), he went into the kitchen and dropped a kiss on the top of her head while she poked at his laptop. She was frowning, slightly, but upon seeing him it melted into a sort of half-smile.

“Managed to get in touch with James. He’s in rehab at the moment but he did say he received a post card from Nikola with this address in Prague,” Helen said, pointing it out on the screen. It wasn’t a drop box, which is what he’d expect out of a criminal mastermind but maybe Tesla and Worth figured it was safe enough to share their actual location with Watson, the brains behind the original serum. Will was just grateful he’d coughed the information up to Helen.

“I have no assurances he hasn’t told Worth and Nikola that we’re coming, mind, but at least we know where to find them even if we don’t catch them unawares. Both have far too much ego to pack up their operation and move it if they’re close to making a breakthrough. James did say they requested some of his research and he turned them down on account of not having access to it so perhaps that’s slowed them down a good bit. I have no doubt in my mind they’ll kill Ashley and whoever else they have with her if they actually succeed in making a viable serum though I don’t know what, exactly, can kill Ashley.”

Will didn’t really want to find out. He figured if it was enough of a trauma that she bled out before the healing factor could repair it, that’d do it, and he figured they would have figured that out. He didn’t say that to Helen, though, because a mission-minded and focused Helen was what they needed on this ill-advised adventure, not a scared mother. Not that he didn’t think Helen was still scared, she was, but she seemed to have focused and channelled it into getting a job done and Will wasn’t going to argue against that.

The trip to the airport was made in relative silence and the flight itself was mostly uneventful except that when the plane took off, Helen squeezed his hand tight enough to cut off circulation. Someone wasn’t fond of flying, apparently, and Will merely gave her what he hoped was a comforting smile and squeezed back. He didn’t sleep on the flight, too wired about what they needed to do, but Helen drifted off on the back half of it between Amsterdam and Prague and Will had to admit it was kind of nice to have her so relaxed with him; when he’d first met her, she only slept in snatches here and there and now she was having a full few hours of sleep next to him. He wanted to believe it was _because_ of him but that was egotistical to say the least.

There wasn’t time to ponder it, anyway, considering he barely had a plan for infiltrating this place other than guns blazing (not an option) and Helen was no agent. She had no idea what to do or how to go about it with subterfuge. The best idea they’d come up with was for Helen to make contact with either Tesla or Worth under the auspices of helping them and get let in as a Trojan horse before ending it. Will wasn’t so sure it was going to work with just two of them but if they got captured, they got captured. The only thing worse would be doing nothing and that was simply unacceptable.

The facility, as it was, was off the beaten path and looked like an industrial warehouse that had long since seen better days. No cars nearby, or anything, and Will figured that contributed to the abandoned aura of it all. There _were_ fresh tire tracks, though, and as he and Helen got out of the car and walked along the muddy, gravel path, some kind of brightly colored flyer stuck to Will’s shoe. He plucked it up and examined it, nudging Helen.

“This is how they got their test subjects. Told them it was a rave, college kids must have eaten that up. Considering a lot of those kids were probably runaways to begin with, nobody would think to come looking for them if they disappeared on a drug and rave bender for a couple weeks. Brilliant, really, if a little twisted.” Helen nodded and still looked incredibly focused in spite of everything but Will could see the pain in her eyes and the tremble in her hands. She was trying to hide it, yeah, but she was scared. He couldn’t blame her and, truth be told, he was scared too.

Helen pulled out a cell phone and dialed a string of numbers before holding up one finger to silence him. Ah. Tesla, he guessed, considering she greeted him warmly enough and asked if it’d be all right if she dropped in. Actually, she was right outside, if he wanted a little help purifying the serum and she was _more_ than willing to offer her own blood as a test as well. She was a good actress, actually, and Will chalked it up to another thing he simply didn’t know about Helen Druitt. He didn’t mind those things, though, and they really only contributed to his overall desire to know her inside and out and much more than one night of sex could really ever satiate. Maybe after...this...they could talk about it. Maybe.

The door to the warehouse buzzed and swung inward and they were greeted by a slight man in a lab coat. Tesla, Will assumed, since he favored the photographs he’d seen of the man over the years and the thick Canadian accent all but confirmed it; everything Will knew about Adam Worth said that man was English, not Canadian, and considering she’d just gotten off the phone with the former and not the latter, it made sense he’d be the one showing them in. It felt a little too much like Dracula inviting the thralls in for his tastes but this was Helen’s friend and she’d have to take point with it whether Will cared for it or not.

“Helen, you never told me you were bringing guests. Don’t you know that’s rude? How am I supposed to know how many places to set for dinner if you’re going to bring drop-ins. Tsk tsk, I expected better. No matter. I’m sure you know what Adam and I have going and having another test subject isn’t going to do any irreparable harm, is it?”

Helen’s eyes narrowed and Will was pretty sure he’d never seen her this angry before. He’d take anger over paralyzing fear, any day, and the cold, calculated tone to her voice didn’t hurt anything either. Maybe if Tesla perceived them as a viable threat, this would go a lot better. Or maybe not - if he didn’t think they were a threat he’d be more likely to make stupid mistakes and leave them loopholes to work with.

“Nikola, I will shoot you dead this instant if you do not release my daughter and whoever else you may have in your custody. I trust a bullet to the brain is not something you particularly want to deal with at the moment?” Tesla didn’t flinch, not exactly, but he did scowl slightly and stepped aside to let Will and Helen pass. Will wasn’t going to relax, oh no, but he tried not to get trigger happy since he had no idea what kind of security Tesla and Worth had going on the place. Maybe they were too egotistical to consider that necessary. That’d be a break.

“Come now, Helen, manners. Trust me, precious Ashley is just fine. She’s a remarkable specimen, actually, and I’m surprised we hadn’t thought to reverse engineer the elixir of life from her before. Of course, nobody remembered that you were pregnant with the little tyke when we all doped ourselves and it took Adam having a very stern chat with John in prison to remember that she’d never even had so much as a scraped knee as a little girl. Really, it’s funny how those details come back to the surface when one is threatened with death of a loved one and being framed for it.”

Will knew the type. Tesla was too damned proud of his scheme to keep quiet about it and since he perceived he and Helen wouldn’t be able to make much of a difference anyway, he was all too happy to run at the mouth about how brilliant he was. It’d be great if, you know, they could actually capture him and do some good but Will wasn’t holding out too many hopes there. He was competent but neither he nor Helen were superheroes.

There was a crash down the hall from them and Will, who hadn’t had his weapon out, drew and started running toward it. Tesla seemed shocked too, as if this wasn’t in the plans, and by the time they made it to what looked like some kind of medical research lab, it looked like Ashley and another girl had Worth pinned to the wall with what appeared to be some kind of dental cabinet or moveable autoclave. Whatever it was, it was heavy, and Will imagined that the elbow Worth took to the face from the other girl didn’t help with his current lack of unconsciousness. The girl turned and caught Will’s eyes. She looked equal parts hyped up on fear and anger and Will hoped the adrenaline would bring her through to the other side.

“You! What are you, Interpol? Get the other one,” she shouted, nodding toward Tesla. Helen seemed to be on it already, though, gun aimed at his head, and the tremble she’d been trying to hide had returned full force at seeing Ashley alive, as had the tears streaming down her face. Tesla had his hands up and had gone down onto his knees, pleading. Figured. He wanted to roll on Worth, it was all Worth’s idea, it was all Worth’s fault.

“Helen,” Will said softly, touching her elbow. “This isn’t you. Don’t shoot him and let us take care of it, okay? The justice system will give him what he deserves, especially since he’s got counts for kidnapping in several countries by this point and we know for a fact that Ashley was abducted in the States. Don’t let him goad you into something you’re going to regret, okay?” It seemed to be enough because she lowered the gun and Tesla was surprisingly willing to keep talking even as Will cuffed him (hands and ankles, he wasn’t taking any chances.)

By the time he’d moved on to restraining the still-unconscious Worth, Ashley and the other girl (Kate, he found out later) had returned with someone else, a young, scruffy guy that seemed to be the focus of their attentions. Helen had left Will’s side to help tend to them and their injuries and after ascertaining that they mostly were dehydration, anemia and nothing that some rest and good food couldn’t cure, she took the three of them outside to call the local authorities and simply...wait.

It had been easy, in the end, but going in, Will hadn’t known or guessed that Ashley would have the resources to turn on Worth or Tesla and he owed more than a little to she and her fellow captives for turning the tide before Will had to demonstrate anything remotely close to excessive force. Badass, he was not. Competent, yes. The locals didn’t seem to be too impressed with his competence or his badge but most of the posturing about whose territory was whose was lost in making sure the three (surviving) victims had blankets and food and medical attention rather than unsanctioned FBI agents going rogue and apprehending international criminals.

After getting coffee for himself and Helen from one of the police, he walked over to where she’d been sitting with Ashley. He hadn’t wanted to interrupt a private moment, no, but he had a vested interest in seeing that they were both all right on account of Helen and his feelings (whatever they happened to be) for her. It hadn’t been a typical case, by any means, and after all this the idea that she was still going to be (in probably not his, considering how royally he’d just fucked up his job) in protection until she testified against her ex seemed foreign and far away. This was much more crazy and stressful than protective custody had ever been.

“Mom? Can I talk to the Federale for a moment?” Will’s nose wrinkled slightly at the term but Helen laughed, so he was inclined to let it go. Conveniently, one of the police wanted to ask Helen questions about what went down and how much she knew and while Will really, _really_ wanted to be there if they were going to question her, he guessed it would be okay if she answered questions by herself. They didn’t seem to be charging her or suspecting her of anything, after all, and he figured she could handle it for the five minutes it would take to talk to Ashley.

“Yes, darling, of course. I’ll be over here, talking to Officer Ierullo, all right?” Ashley rolled her eyes and Helen’s own were sparkling so Will imagined this was a common occurrence between them. He was just glad to get a chance to see it again with Ashley alive and well and not the alternative; he didn’t think he could bear to watch Helen grieve for a daughter after everything else she’d been through.

“Look, Will? It’s Will, right?” Will nodded. Ashley didn’t seem to favor Helen as much in person as she had in photographs and Will figured it had a lot to do with the fact that she’d been missing for over a month more than anything else. The eyes, though, those were the same and he could see more of the fire in Ashley’s than he’d ever seen in Helen’s.

“Thanks for listening to her. My dad, the other agents...from what she was saying, nobody was really taking her seriously until you and she needed someone to believe in her. My dad fucked her up pretty badly.” Ashley rolled her styrofoam cup of coffee between her hands, stalling for time or looking for her words; Will hadn’t decided which it was, yet, but it was definitely a tell and it was similar to one of Helen’s own. Like Mother, like Daughter, it seemed.

“Your mom is a smart woman. It would have been stupid to dismiss her concerns, especially when things stopped making sense when I tried to fit them into the context of it being about your dad instead of about something else entirely. It was fucking stupid of us to come out here, yeah, and my job’s probably on the line but it doesn’t matter since we got you back. I’d do it all over again and risk a lot more life and limb if it meant we got the same outcome.”

Ashley laughed a little and smirked at him and Will didn’t exactly know what that meant. He kind of hated when someone else had the playbook and he didn’t know the score and he smirked right back, tilting his head and waiting on her response. Put the ball back in her court before he said something stupid to embarrass himself.

“She’s got it bad for you. Be careful with that. I would hate to have to come kick your ass for hurting her feelings.”

Well, then. That was in the realm of the entirely unexpected. Not bad, not good, but something he definitely had to think about after he found out whether or not the FBI still employed him and whether or not Helen was going to go into witness protection after testifying. It was still up in the air one way or the other but considering the threats made against her had been Tesla and Worth and not necessarily related to Druitt and Griffin, he didn’t think it was as likely as it’d been a few months ago.

It was something to think about, anyway, because if she didn’t - well. There was a chance he could make something work between them, wasn’t there?

  
_Six Months Later_   


“Surprised they let you off desk duty to even come to this one, Will.”

Will barely refrained from rolling his eyes at Abby and he imagined that probably had to do with the fact that with Druitt’s trial over and he, Griffin, Tesla and Worth all locked up for more or less good, it meant that Helen was more free than she’d been in years. He hadn’t seen her since Prague, actually, having been ripped off her case and assigned to the bowels of the building doing backgrounds for other agents and stripped of his special agent status but he wouldn’t have changed the outcome of Prague or risking everything to save Ashley Druitt even if it had meant keeping his job. No way.

Helen and Ashley had actually been assigned to Abby for the last six months and Will wasn’t sure where she’d been keeping them; he’d had a little contact over secure phone lines and email but he hadn’t actually gotten to see Helen in the interim and instead of the lack of contact making his feelings fade and die out, it’d only gotten worse. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, apparently.

The trial was done, though, and Helen was being escorted down the back steps of the courthouse to be turned back over to Abby and a pair of US Marshals who would be moving her and presumably Ashley to their next (and hopefully permanent) home. Will nodded toward her and the smile he got in return was almost blinding. Fuck. It looked like she hadn’t really forgotten about him either, in the interim, and that made things a hell of a lot more complicated than they were already going to be.

“Abby, could you?” Abby was already moving away to talk to the Marshals and for a moment, even though the steps were crowded with officers, citizens and paparazzi all trying to get a look and a soundbyte from Helen Druitt, it felt like the two of them were the only people in the world for a moment. Will took her hands in his, squeezing lightly.

“Hi. Did they tell you if you were going to be stripped of your identity and whisked away to a new and enlightening life as a Wal-Mart cashier in Wyoming?” Helen laughed lightly and it was a gorgeous sound: free, light and without the worry and the regret he’d always associated her with. The past couldn’t be erased, clearly, but maybe the future would be brighter for her and she’d carve out a way to be happy again, she and Ashley both. It was all Will could ask for her.

“Ah, yes. Meet Margaret Zimmerman, children’s librarian in Maine. Maggie, for short. Ashley’s becoming Alana, her idea, even though I absolutely detest the name. I don’t think Maggie Zimmerman would ever name a child something as out there as _Alana_.” Will laughed too, but it was hollow. If she was formally going into protection, there was no way he’d ever be able to see her again except on official business and considering she was the Marshals’ problem now and not the FBI’s, he probably couldn’t even contrive that all that often. Still, it wasn’t about him, and never would be.

“That’s great, though, you won’t have to worry. And you and Ashley will always know who you really are, right? That’s something. And Zimmerman’s a nice, strong name. Nothing can go wrong with that.” It pricked at his heart a little that she’d picked that, or conned the Marshals into letting her use that, for her new name. Maybe there was something to the feelings after all but he wasn’t going to get his hopes up. Even if she did care about him as much as he cared about her, there was no way to make it work, not really.

“No, nothing can go wrong. Look, I...spoke with the Marshals. Considering most of the people who want me dead are behind bars for a long, long while, I asked if perhaps you could visit me. They’ve agreed to it but you have to resign since it’s a massive conflict of interest. I know it’s likely entirely too much to ask you but...”

Helen didn’t get to finish the sentence before Will had his hands in his hair and his mouth on hers, kissing her with all the pent up desire he’d been trying to deny for the last six months of only being able to have contact with her via email and phone. He’d missed her more than anything, more than anyone, and even a not-so-subtle cough in his direction from Abby wasn’t enough to get him to take his lips off hers or his hands out of her gorgeous hair. When he did break away, it was solely to brush his thumb back against her cheek and give his response, since he imagined she’d want to know that sooner rather than later.

“Yeah. Resignation will be on my boss’s desk as soon as I can draft it. I’m sure I can figure it out if you’re willing to have me.”

That laugh, that gorgeous laugh again and Helen brushed her thumb against his lower lip. “I suppose I could endure your company so long as you continue to kiss me like that. I will require much in the way of kissing, you realize, and considering I won’t be terribly stimulated working in the library, you’ll have to keep me from being bored.”

Yeah. Like Will could ever have a problem with _that._


End file.
